Description:

• Deciduous bulbous herbs
• Bulb 100-130 mm in diameter, with brittle, cartilaginous tunics, producing extensible threads when torn; neck transversally banded
• Leaves (3)4-6, present after flowering, prostrate, biflabellate, broadly lorate; lower surface speckled with red; margin raised, fringed with stiff bristles
• Inflorescence 30-220-flowered, in a globose head, 100-400 mm in diameter; scape strongly compressed, solid, 50-280 mm long, abscissing at ground level for seed dispersal; spathe valves 2, oblong, membranous
• Flowers irregular, sometimes very weakly so, inconspicuous, blackish maroon, dusky pink or pale yellow; pedicels radiating, much longer than perigone, trigonous in cross section
• Tepals connate basally into a short tube; segments narrowly oblong-lanceolate, reflexed
• Stamens arising in perigone throat, declinate or spreading, ± equal; filaments filiform, swollen and connate into a short tube at base; anthers dorsifixed; pollen bisulculate with spinulose exine
• Ovary ovoid; ovules 2-4 per locule, unitegmic; style declinate, filiform; stigma minutely trifid
• Capsule ovoid, loculicidal, with conspicuous transverse veining
• Seeds fleshy, ovoid, ± 5 mm in diameter, reddish green; testa stomatose; integument and embryo green
• x = 11

Nomenclature:

• Crossyne Salisb.
  • Salisbury: 116 (1866)
  • Müller-Doblies: 355 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 2, endemic to the winter-rainfall region of South Africa, in the Northern and Western Cape