Description:

• Herbaceous pubescent geophytes; indumentum on leaves, pedicels, ovary and backs of outer tepals; hairs whitish to reddish brown, stellate to biramous, rarely wanting
• Rhizome vertical, slow-growing, often large, subglobse to elongated, often with yellow sap; roots stout, present mostly in upper half of rhizome
• Leaves few to many, basal, tristichous, striate, linear to ovate, with intercalary meristem, clasping basally and often surrounded by dry basal fibres of older leaves, occasionally petiolate
• Inflorescence an axillary raceme or corymb, rarely 1-flowered; scape long, leafless; bracts narrow, 1 or sometimes 2 subtending each flower
• Flowers stellate, often opposite, yellow or occasionally white, with green backs; pedicels long or short
• Tepals 6(4), free, patent, subequal, narrowly ovate, persistent and connivent during ripening of fruit
• Stamens 6(4), exserted, arising from tepal base, spreading, short; filaments filiform to subulate; anthers latrorse, basifixed, ± versatile when older
• Ovary turbinate to clavate, 3-locular, with many axile ovules; style short, cylindrical; stigma obconical, 3-grooved
• Capsule turbinate to obovoid, thin-walled, circumscissile or loculicidal
• Seeds subglobose, black to dark brown, shiny or dull, verrucose to echinulate; raphe and hilum distinct
• x = 7 (aneuploids, high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Hypoxis L.
  • Linnaeus: 986, 1366 (1759) in part, excluding H. fascicularis L.
  • Baker: 174 (1896) in part, excluding subgenus Ianthe
  • Wilsenach: 75 (1967)
  • Wilsenach & Papenfuss: 111 (1967)
  • Wilsenach & Warren: 133 (1967)
  • Sölch & Roessler: 1 (1969)
  • Heideman: 889 (1983)
  • Nordal et al.: 15 (1985)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 90, but probably fewer warrant recognition; pantropical, widespread in sub-Saharan Africa, America, SE Asia and Australia
• Southern Africa: Species ± 45, centre of diversity, found in all countries and provinces except Botswana and Northern Cape