Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Seasonal perennial or occasionally annual herbs, perennials with a persistent rhizome or a short erect crown with fibrous or thickened to swollen and fleshy roots.

Stems: Flowering stems unbranched or variously branched, sometimes winged, comprising 1 to several internodes.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Usually distichous, usually isobilateral and unifacial. Blades lanceolate to linear or occasionally terete (cylindrical). Surfaces glabrous. Margins entire. Veins parallel. Sessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences comprising 1 or more clusters each enclosed in a pair of opposed spathe-like bracts. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic. Tepals usually yellow or blue to purple with a yellow center, occasionally whitish or pink, subequal, diverging from base or cupped and then often including the stamens and style. Stamens 3; filaments usually partly to completely connate; anthers spreading to coherent. Ovary inferior, 3-carpellate, 3-celled; ovule placentation axile; styles either long, with 3 short branches, or short, with 3 long slender branches, these extending between the stamens.

Fruit: Capsules globose to cylindrical; sometimes trigonous. Seeds numerous; usually blackish; globose; often with a deep pit.

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