Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial herbs, rarely shrubby or treelike, often with bulbs, corms, rhizomes, or tubers.

Stems:

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Spirally arranged. Blades linear. Base sessile. Margins entire or spiny. Veins parallel. Sheathing. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescence a terminal spike, umbel, raceme, panicle, or flowers solitary. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic or zygomorphic, usually subtended by 1 to several spathaceous involucres. Stamens 6, inserted at perianth throat or at base of segments; filaments sometimes basally connate; anther dorsifixed or basifixed, mostly introrse. Ovary inferior, 3-loculed; ovules few to many per locule, placentation axile; style slender; stigma capitate or 3-lobed.

Fruit: Capsules; usually loculicidal; sometimes dehiscing irregularly; rarely a berry. Seeds with endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: