Description:

• Deciduous bulbous herbs
• Bulb large, 100-150 mm in diameter, with a tough, leathery covering, producing extensible threads when torn
• Leaves perennial, 9-14, present during or after flowering, prostrate, biflabellate, narrowly to broadly lorate, glabrous; margins hyaline, usually fringed with short branched cilia; apex truncate in mature leaves
• Inflorescence a 13-90-flowered, spreading cluster, 150-340 mm in diameter; scape compressed, solid, up to 200 mm long, abscissing at ground level for seed dispersal; spathe valves 2, broadly lanceolate, coriaceous
• Flowers weakly irregular, widely funnel-shaped, ivory or pale to dark pink; pedicels spreading, shorter than to ± equalling perigone at anthesis, lengthening and radiating in fruit
• Tepals connate into a distinct subcylindric tube; segments oblanceolate, spreading and slightly recurved distally, longer than tube
• Stamens arising below perigone throat, weakly declinate; filaments filiform, free at base, exserted; anthers dorsifixed, versatile; pollen bisulculate with spinulose exine
• Ovary narrowly fusiform, obscurely trigonous; ovules 1-19 per locule, becoming ategmic; style declinate, filiform; stigma undivided
• Fruit indehiscent, pyriform to subfusiform, somewhat trigonous, prominently 6-ribbed, bluntly beaked, walls papery, breaking open irregularly
• Seeds water-rich, subglobose, 5-30 mm in diameter, with a thin corky covering; endosperm greenish in outer layers; embryo green
• x = 11

Nomenclature:

• Cybistetes Milne-Redh. & Schweick.
  • Milne-Redhead & Schweickerdt: 191 (1939)
  • Müller-Doblies: 359 (1994)
  • Snijman & Williamson: 127 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 1: Cybistetes longifolia (L.) Milne-Redh. & Schweick., widespread in the western winter-rainfall region in Namibia, Northern and Western Cape