Description:

• Perennial herbs, small to medium-sized; with single to multiple globose or irregularly shaped, hypocotyledonary tuber, sometimes with a proliferation of rhizomes or stolons; internally white, yellow, pink or purplish red, with one or more apical or lateral to basal growing points, each protected by a neck of sheathing fibrous remains of leaf bases
• Leaves 1-several, basally concentrated, synanthous or hysteranthous, erect or prostrate, glabrous or pubescent, with a distinct petiole-like base; lamina linear to lanceolate, ovate or orbicular, with complex appendages or enations sometimes produced from upper surface; also some scale-like, reduced basal leaves
• Peduncle erect, straight or sometimes flexuose, unbranched, terete, naked
• Inflorescence a simple raceme, few-many-flowered, cylindrical to corymbose, dense or lax, upper flowers sometimes sterile or aborted
• Bracts minute, solitary, basal, subtending a single flower
• Pedicels short or long, articulated at apex
• Flowers bisexual, regular, small, diurnal; triangular in outline, rotate, campanulate or recurved, 6-14 mm in diameter
• Tepals 3 + 3, free, dimorphic with outer spreading and inner erect, or all equal to subequal, connate at base only, uninerved, persistent, white, pink, yellow or green
• Stamens 3 + 3, hypogynous, adnate to base of tepals; filaments filiform to broadly lanceolate; anthers peltate, dorsifixed, versatile, subglobose to oval, introrse
• Ovary superior, sessile, 3-locular, each with 2-6 axile ovules; style 1, terete; stigma apical, small
• Fruit a loculicidal, turbinate to ovoid capsule, emarginate, dehiscent, 3-valved, valves persistent
• Seeds 6-12, oval to comma-shaped; testa fawn, densely covered with unicellular white hairs up to 8 mm long, turning brown with age
• x = 7 (10, 12)

Nomenclature:

• Eriospermum Jacq. ex Willd.
  • Willdenow: 110 (1799)
  • Jacquin: 235 (1794-95)
  • Jacquin: 72 (1795)
  • Kunth: 649 (1843)
  • Salisbury: 15 (1866)
  • Harvey: 402 (1868)
  • Bentham & Hooker: 786 (1883)
  • Baker: 262 (1876)
  • Baker: 369 (1896)
  • Baker: 470 (1898)
  • Krause: 293 (1930)
  • Duthie: 1 (1940)
  • Archibald: 93 (1960)
  • Sölch et al.: 43 (1970)
  • Perry: 18 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 102, tropical and southern Africa
• Southern Africa: Species ± 100, all countries and provinces, but mostly Western Cape