Description:

• Evergreen rhizomatous herbs
• Rhizome short, or long and erect
• Leaves several, distichous, firm, strap-shaped
• Inflorescence a many-flowered, compact or lax cluster; scape stout, fleshy, solid, shorter than leaves, compressed with 2 sharp edges, persisting in fruit; spathe valves 4 or more, imbricate, unequal, soon withering
• Flowers regular or weakly irregular, narrowly to widely funnel-shaped, straight or slightly curved, spreading to pendulous, orange and yellow; pedicels shorter than to equalling perigone
• Tepals connate into a short tube; segments connivent to somewhat spreading, 3 outer narrower than 3 inner
• Stamens arising from perigone throat; filaments filiform, free at base, ± as long as perigone segments; anthers oblong, dorsifixed, versatile
• Ovary globose; ovules bitegmic, 5 or 6 per locule; style long, slender; stigma tricuspidate
• Berry subglobose, red with yellow flesh
• Seeds 1-few, globose, ivory-coloured; embryo white to green
• x = 11

Nomenclature:

• Clivia Lindl.
  • Lindley: t. 1182 (1828)
  • Baker: 228 (1896)
  • Vorster: 70 (1994)
• Imantophyllum Hook.
  • Hooker: t. 4783 (1854)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 4, confined to region in coastal and inland forests from the Northern Province, Mpumalanga, Swaziland and KwaZulu-Natal to the Eastern Cape