Hessea

Deciduous bulbous herbs. Bulb 10-60 mm in diameter; outer tunics thinly fibrous to thick and felt-like, rarely brittle, producing extensible threads when torn. Leaves 2(-4), present after flowering, distichous, filiform to lorate, glabrous or rarely minutely pilose. Inflorescence 4-65-flowered, in a +/- hemispherical head, 25-120 mm in diameter; scape slender, solid, 20-220 mm long, abscissing at ground level in fruit; spathe valves 2, narrowly lanceolate, membranous. Flowers regular, usually stellate, rarely hypocrateriform or funnel-shaped, pink or rarely white to lemon-yellow, unmarked or with a dark centre; pedicels radiating, distinctly longer than perigone. Tepals free or proximally connate into a short or occasionally long tube, plane or crisped. Stamens spreading, often shortly confluent with tepals at base, rarely in 2 unequal series; filaments proximally connate into a very short or long tube, sometimes bearing inwardly curved hooks; anthers centrifixed to subcentrifixed; pollen bisulculate with spinulose exine. Ovary subglobose; ovules up to 4 per locule, unitegmic; style slender, erect, exserted or rarely included in perigone tube; stigma trifid. Capsule small, loculicidal, papery, subglobose. Seeds fleshy, ovoid, +/- 4 mm in diameter, reddish green; testa stomatose; integument and embryo green. x = 10 (aneuploids).