Description:

• Perennial herbs of varied habit; rootstock a rounded tuber or tunicated corm; stems annual, erect, sometimes prickly, or reduced to an inflorescence with basal leaves
• Leaves cauline and alternate, or basal, 2-many, distichous or rosulate, deciduous
• Flowers bisexual, ± regular, in axils of stem leaves or in exserted racemes, bracteate; pedicels usually recurved
• Perianth segments 3 + 3, free or forming a short tube, spreading, usually pink or yellow, subequal, marcescent
• Stamens 6, often with 1 or 3 dimorphous, variously coherent, arising on throat of perianth tube or base of segments; filaments often variously fused basally; anthers 2-thecous, basifixed, connective sometimes variously produced, opening by apical, often swollen pores, rarely by slits
• Ovary half-inferior, or superior, 3-locular, conical above; ovules axile, many, biseriate; style subulate; stigma apical, small
• Fruit a loculicidal capsule
• Seeds many, globose or ovoid, usually black

Classification Notes:

• Formerly often placed in Haemodoraceae

Nomenclature:

• Tecophilaeaceae
  • Hutchinson: 758 (1973)
  • Dahlgren & Van Wyk: 75 (1988)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera 6, species ± 25; tropical and southern Africa, Chile, California
• Southern Africa: Genera 2, species ± 10. The generic placement of Cyanella amboensis Schinz needs further study (Scott 1991)

References:

• DAHLGREN, R. & VAN WYK, A.E. 1988. Structures and relationships of families endemic to or centered in southern Africa. Monographs in Systematic Botany from the Missouri Botanical Garden 25
• HUTCHINSON, J. 1973. The families of flowering plants, edn 3. Clarendon, Oxford

Resources:

• Key to Tecophilaeaceae genera

• Tecophilaeaceae genera: