Description:

• Deciduous bulbous herbs
• Bulb 25-160 mm in diameter; outer tunics tough, leathery, producing extensible threads when torn
• Leaves perennial, 5-8(-15), present during flowering, spreading to prostrate, distichous, usually conspicuously biflabellate, linear to lorate; margins hyaline, often fringed with short branched cilia; apex truncate in mature leaves
• Inflorescence a 3-60-flowered cluster, 40-200 mm in diameter; scape compressed, solid, 10-35 mm long, reclining in fruit; spathe valves 2, lanceolate, becoming papery
• Flowers regular, hypocrateriform to trumpet-shaped, pale to deep pink or white; pedicels spreading, shorter than to ± equalling the perigone
• Tepals connate into a narrow, cylindrical tube; segments linear to oblanceolate, spreading or recurved, shorter to slightly longer than tube
• Stamens arising in or slightly below perigone throat, spreading, equal; filaments filiform, free at base, exserted; anthers dorsifixed, versatile; pollen bisulculate with spinulose exine
• Ovary ± cylindric, obtusely 3-angled; ovules 4-30 per locule, becoming ategmic; style straight, filiform, exserted or included in tube; stigma undivided
• Fruit indehiscent, subglobose, membranous, bluntly beaked, opening irregularly
• Seeds water-rich, subglobose, 7-15 mm in diameter, with a thin corky covering; endosperm greenish in outer layers; embryo green
• x = 11

Nomenclature:

• Ammocharis Herb.
  • Herbert: 17 (1821)
  • Baker: 203 (1896)
  • Milne-Redhead & Schweickerdt: 159 (1939)
  • Sölch & Roessler: 2 (1969)
• Palinetes Salisb.
  • Salisbury: 116 (1866) name illegitimate

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 5, widespread throughout sub-Saharan Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 3, in all countries and provinces, particularly semi-arid summer-rainfall regions