Description:

• Erect, tough, tufted perennials; rhizome relatively short, vertical, whitish in transection, lower part of rhizome dark, verrucose, with one thick root emerging from each wart-like lobe; upper part bearing several leaves and, below them, dense, fibrous, brownish black sheaths of old leaves
• Leaves basal, distichous, about 6 per shoot, linear, rigid, ribbed, glabrous, sheathing at base
• Flowers bisexual, regular, many, in a much-branched, bracteate cyme or expanded panicle, densely villous with white plumose hairs; peduncle exserted, villous, with some scattered, glabrous, acuminate bracts; pedicels short
• Perianth with short tube and 6 spreading, linear segments, villous outside, glabrous and a mauvy-pink inside
• Stamens 3 + 3, erect, short outer filaments arising from throat of perianth, 3 inner somewhat shorter; anthers versatile, sagittate, opening by longitudinal slits
• Ovary subinferior, protruding somewhat above, 3-locular; ovules axile, anatropous, 2 in each locule; style subulate, exserted; stigma small, 3-lobed
• Capsule subglobose, 1-seeded, crowned with persistent perianth; fertile locule dehiscing loculicidally
• Seeds single, black, shiny, with thick testa encrusted with phytomelan; endosperm copious, nonstarchy

Nomenclature:

• Lanaria Aiton
  • Aiton: 462 (1789)
  • Baker: 4 (1896)
  • De Vos: 79 (1963)
  • Hutchinson: 831 (1973)
  • Dahlgren & Van Wyk: 71 (1988)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 1: Lanaria lanata (L.) T.Durand & Schinz, from the Hottentots Holland Mountains in Western Cape to near Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape