Description:

• Perennial herbs, often forming colonies, glabrous, glossy, rich in saponins; with a cylindrical, branched rhizome bearing copious fleshy roots
• Leaves evergreen or deciduous, distichous, numerous, linear, smooth, firm, acute, entire
• Flowers bisexual, regular, arranged in a central umbel on a long, naked, stout peduncle, produced above leaves, usually very many and showy, deep to light blue or white, chartaceous, persistent; pedicels firm, erect, spreading or cernuous
• Perianth cylindric to campanulate, forming a short or long tube, deciduous, splitting sideways; segments 3 + 3; outer 3 usually narrower than inner ones, often slightly hooded, erect or spreading
• Stamens 3 + 3, arising from within perianth tube, loosely connivent, declinate, shorter or longer than perianth segments, somewhat unequal; anthers 2-thecous, small, versatile, dorsifixed, introrse
• Ovary superior, ovoid or oblong, 3-locular, with many axile ovules; style filiform, semipersistent; stigma apical, small
• Capsule ovoid to fusiform, loculicidally dehiscent
• Seeds flat, ovate, winged, black, shiny
• x = 15

Nomenclature:

• Agapanthus L'Hér.
  • L'Héritier: 17 (1788)
  • Baker: 402 (1897)
  • Leighton: 1 (1965)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 10, variable, widespread, except Namibia, Botswana and Northern Cape and mainly at higher altitudes