Description:

• Perennial, small to large, deciduous or rarely evergreen, bulbous herbs, occasionally forming clumps
• Bulb globose or globose-depressed; outer tunics enveloping inner or imbricate, membranous or often fibrous at tip
• Leaves 1-many; usually contemporary with flowers, sometimes developing after flowering; terete, linear to lorate, occasionally spirally twisted, apex acute to acuminate, glabrous, hairy or glandular-pubescent; with a tubular basal sheath
• Inflorescence a raceme of few to many flowers; peduncle naked, firm, cylindrical; bracts lanceolate to ovate-acuminate
• Flowers white or yellow with broad green keels, erect or nodding, sometimes sweetly scented; pedicels short or long
• Tepals free, persistent, oblong; outer tepals spreading, inner tepals connivent, rarely spreading, enclosing stamens and gynoecium, hooded at apex
• Stamens 3 + 3, or occasionally 3 inner fertile and 3 outer sterile with anthers not fully formed or absent; filaments terete or winged and expanded below; anthers versatile, introrse
• Ovary oblong, often angled, ovules many; style cylindrical or narrowly obpyramidal with the angles scabrid; stigma apical, capitate or conical or with 3 deltoid fimbriate lobes
• Fruit an ovoid to globose capsule, 3-angled, dehiscing loculicidally (septa also tear apart in some species)
• Seeds flat, semicircular, black, shiny, papillate
• x = 9 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Albuca L.
  • Linnaeus: 438 (1762)
  • Baker: 451 (1897)
  • Sölch et al.: 5 (1970)
  • Knudtzon & Stedje: 773 (1986)
  • Müller-Doblies: 365 (1994)
  • Hutchings et al.: 38 (1996)
  • Stedje: 21 (1996)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 80, mostly in southern Africa but extending to Arabian Peninsula
• Southern Africa: Species ± 60, in all countries and provinces
  • Many species have very restricted distributions
  • Habitat ranges from sandy soils to rocky outcrops, grassland to thornveld
  • The broad greenish keels of the flowers often fade to a characteristic orange-brown colour, a similar colour to that of the capsules
  • Several species are in the horticultural trade and several are used medicinally