Crinum

Deciduous or evergreen bulbous herbs. Bulb 20-220 mm in diameter; sometimes splitting to form clumps; outer tunics tough, coriaceous, producing extensible threads when torn. Leaves perennial, 4-many, present during flowering, with or without a thickened midrib; sheathing bases often forming a false stem; margins sometimes undulate, hyaline, +/- fringed with short, branched cilia; apex of mature leaves often truncate. Inflorescence a 1-25-flowered cluster, up to 300 mm in diameter; scape compressed, solid, fleshy, 30-700 mm or more long, reclining in fruit; spathe valves 2, narrowly to broadly lanceolate, membranous. Flowers showy, irregular, often weakly so by deflection of style, hypocrateriform to trumpet-shaped, pale to deep pink or white, often with deep pink keels; pedicels spreading, much shorter than perigone. Tepals connate into a long, narrow, cylindric tube, often curved; segments linear to broadly lanceolate, reflexed or +/- spreading and recurved towards apex, equalling to shorter than tube. Stamens arising from perigone throat, arcuate and spreading or declinate, equal or unequal; filaments filiform, free at base; anthers dorsifixed, versatile, curved; pollen bisulculate with spinulose exine. Ovary ellipsoid; ovules +/- 12 per locule, becoming ategmic; style declinate, filiform, exserted; stigma obscurely 3-lobed. Fruit indehiscent, subglobose, membranous or occasionally somewhat fleshy, sometimes beaked, opening irregularly. Seeds subglobose, 20-30 mm in diameter, with a thin corky covering, occasionally papillose; outer layers of endosperm green; embryo green. x = 11.