Description:

• Deciduous or evergreen bulbous herbs
• Bulb often splitting into large clusters or producing bulbils
• Leaves few to several, erect to spreading, sometimes twisted or spiralled, slender to strap-shaped, glabrous, often with a conspicuous midrib, present during or after flowering
• Inflorescence 1-many-flowered, often lax; scape hollow or rarely solid, glabrous; spathe-valves 2-4, soon withering
• Flowers regular to weakly irregular, erect to pendulous, red, orange, yellow or white; pedicels shorter than or equalling perigone
• Tepals connate into a distinct tube; tube usually longer than segments, ± dilated from base, often curved; segments equal or subequal
• Stamens arising from throat or perigone tube; filaments in 2 series, usually free, rarely with bases expanded into a false corona; anthers dorsifixed, rarely pseudo-basifixed, versatile
• Ovary subglobose; ovules many per locule; style ± as long or longer than filaments; stigma shortly to distinctly 3-lobed
• Capsule ± ellipsoid, loculicidally 3-valved
• Seeds black, flattened, wrinkled, usually somewhat winged
• x = 8

Nomenclature:

• Cyrtanthus Aiton
  • Aiton: 414 (1789)
  • Baker: 218 (1896)
  • Dyer: 65 (1939)
  • Gordon-Gray & Wright: 35 (1969)
  • Nordal: 23 (1982)
  • Reid & Dyer: 1 (1984)
• Vallota Herb.
  • Herbert: 29 (1821)
  • Baker: 217 (1896).
• Anoiganthus Baker
  • Baker: 76 (1878)
  • Baker: 193 (1896)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species ± 50, in all countries and provinces except Botswana, with the greatest species diversity in eastern parts
  • ± 2 species in sub-Saharan Africa