AMARYLLIDACEAE

Perennial herbs, rarely shrubby or tree-like, often with bulbs, rhizomes, corms or tubers. Leaves basal or cauline, cauline leaves alternate, often narrow, margin entire or spiny, sometimes succulent with waxy coating. Flowers borne on a leafless scape singly, in twos or more arranged closely in cymose manner so as to resemble an umbel or in spikes, racemes or panicles. Flowers bisexual, usually epigynous, sometimes hypogynous, usually actinomorphic, occasionally zygomorphic, usually subtended and enclosed by 1 to several bracts forming SPATHE or INVOLUCRE. Perianth 6, in 2 whorls of 3 each, free, mostly connate to form a short tube. Cupulate or tubular corona, resembling an additional corona tube inserted outside stamens present or absent. Stamens 6, free, inserted on throat or at base of perianth tube; filaments sometimes basally connate; anthers dorsifixed or basifixed, mostly introrse. Carpels 3, syncarpous; ovary inferior, 3-locular, ovules few to many per locule, placentation axile; style slender; stigma capitate or 3-lobed. Fruit a capsule, usually loculicidal, sometimes irregular dehiscence, sometimes a berry. Seeds black, endospermic.

71 genera and about 1600 species