Description:

• Deciduous bulbous herbs
• Bulb 20-200 mm in diameter, subterranean or exposed; outer tunics parchment-like or cartilaginous, producing extensible fibres when torn
• Leaves (2-)4-6(-20), present during or after flowering, distichous, suberect or appressed to the ground, often biflabellate, oblong to lingulate, smooth or adaxial surface macropapillate to bristly; margin usually raised, often fringed with short branched cilia
• Inflorescence (3-)20-40(-80)-flowered, in a ± hemispherical head, 50-80 mm in diameter; scape strongly compressed, solid, 30-600 mm long, abscissing at ground level for seed dispersal; spathe valves 2, oblong-lanceolate, leathery to papery
• Flowers irregular, rarely almost regular, widely flared to irregularly funnel-shaped, pink, red or rarely white; pedicels radiating, at least in fruit, much longer than or rarely as long as perigone
• Tepals connate basally into a short tube; segments narrowly to broadly oblong-lanceolate, recurved, usually plane
• Stamens arising near tepal base, ± declinate, rarely erect, ± equal; filaments filiform, clustered, shortly connate basally, sometimes with lateral appendages at base; anthers dorsifixed; pollen bisulculate with spinulose exine
• Ovary subglobose to conical; ovules 3-10 per locule, unitegmic; style filiform, declinate or rarely erect; stigma 3-lobed
• Capsule large, inflated, loculicidal, sometimes tardily so, fusiform or trigonous and tapering basally, 3-ribbed, with conspicuous transverse veining
• Seeds fleshy, ovoid, 5-10 mm in diameter, reddish green; testa stomatose; integument and embryo green
• x = 11

Nomenclature:

• Brunsvigia Heist.
  • Heister: 3 (1755)
  • Baker: 204 (1896)
  • Dyer: 63 (1950)
  • Dyer: 44 (1951)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species ± 20, a widespread endemic, in all countries and provinces, particularly speciose in semi-arid regions