Description:

• Succulent perennial herbs or subshrubs, rarely annual; up to 1.8 m high; rootstock tuberous, cormose or rarely bulb-like, frequently rhizomatous; roots slender, fibrous or rarely fusiform; stems with circular leaf scars, branching freely, or basal, or vestigial
• Leaves 1-many, sometimes subdistichous, rarely distichous, usually in a basal rosette but aggregated or spreading along stem in caulescent forms, glabrous or margins occasionally hairy, erect, spreading or prostrate, terete, triangular or dorsiventrally flattened, rarely flexuous or spirally twisted; apex truncate, tapering to a point or mucronate; some outer leaves scale-like; leaf bases broadened, with transparent wings extending into a tubular sheath
• Inflorescence a lax or compact raceme, sometimes somewhat corymbose, 1-many per plant, normally upright, usually overtopping leaves; peduncle usually terete, ± glabrous
• Flowers few to many; pedicels usually slender, persistent, erect, erecto-patent, nonfruiting pedicels frequently recurved, not articulated; bracts membranous, shorter or as long as pedicel, margins usually entire, sometimes hairy
• Perianth stellate; segments free, spreading or reflexed, oblong, 1-nerved, yellow or rarely white, orange or pink; outer whorl narrower than inner, deciduous, cohering apically when withered, circumscissile below, with a small annulus persisting below ovary; shows diurnal movement
• Stamens erect, free; filaments slender and densely bearded in upper half
• Ovary globose; with 2-many axile ovules; style terete, slender, papillate; stigma apical
• Capsule globose, occasionally inflated and thin-walled, sometimes woody
• Seeds 1-several per locule, black or brown, flattened or deltoid with margins sometimes winged, either smooth or tuberculate, often compressed and aborted during maturation
• x = 7, 12, 13, 14 (aneuploids, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Bulbine Wolf
  • Wolf: 84 (1776) name conserved
  • Willdenow: 372 (1809)
  • Baker: 359 (1896-1897)
  • Phillips: 183 (1951)
  • Sölch et al.: 33 (1970)
  • Baijnath: 276 (1977)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 50; Africa and Australia
• Southern Africa: Species ± 46, widespread in all countries and provinces