Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Geophytic perennial herbs with an underground rhizome or a tufted crown.

Stems: Flowering stems terete (cylindrical) or compressed to strongly 2–winged.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Leaves in a basal fan-like arrangement. Blades linear to lanceolate, plane and isobilateral, rarely terete (cylindrical). Margins entire. Veins parallel. Sessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences comprising 1 or more clusters each enclosed in opposed, spathe-like bracts, the clusters variously-arranged in panicles or racemes. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic. Tepals shades of blue to violet, subequal, spreading horizontally, scarcely connate at base. Stamens 3, ascending to erect. Ovary inferior, triangular in cross section, sometimes elongate; style excentric, filiform, obscurely to distinctly lobed apically or 3– branched.

Fruit: Capsules globose to cylindrical; often trigonous. Seeds numerous; to 2 per cell; angular; globose; or flat.

Ploidy:

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