Empodium

Small solitary or caespitose geophytes, glabrous or sparsely pubescent with uniseriate hairs. Corm annual, subglobose, covered with reticulate fibrous tunics; roots thin, arising from lower half of corm. Leaves 1-several, developing after or occasionally during flowering, linear to ovate, often plicate, glabrous or sparsely hairy on ribs or margins; bases surrounded by tubular, sometimes dark, membranous sheaths, often gaping and acute apically. Inflorescence 1-flowered, 2-6 per corm; scape reduced; bracts 0. Flowers stellate to hypocrateriform, mostly yellow; pedicels hidden within leaf sheaths or shortly exserted, sometimes sparsely ciliate, triangular in cross section. Tepals 6, arising from a short or long solid, sometimes ciliate neck, narrowly ovate, patent or reflexed, green-backed, glabrous. Stamens 6, erect; filaments held close together, short, arising from tepal base; anthers linear, basifixed, sometimes with filiform apical appendages. Ovary shortly exserted to enclosed by leaf sheaths, 1-locular with 3 parietal placentas; ovules on long, often swollen funicles; style short or long with 3 long, subulate stigmatic lobes. Fruit indehiscent, fusiform, prolonged into a short or long terete beak, subsucculent to thin-walled when ripe, disintegrating irregularly from apex. Seeds globose, black, shiny, warty. x = 7.