Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial or occasionally annual herbs primarily of wet habitats, ± with rhizomes.

Stems: Rhizomes.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, equitant, primarily basal, sometimes cauline. Blades ensiform to terete (cylindrical). Surfaces smooth, papillose, rugose, or scaberulose. Margins entire or minutely scabrous. Veins parallel. Sheathing, sheaths open. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in scapes terminal, erect, leafless, bracts numerous, imbricate. Flowers odorless and without nectar, pollinated by pollen–gathering bees, bisexual (perfect). Calyx zygomorphic; sepals unequal, the middle one larger, hood-like, caducous, the lateral ones boat-shaped to spatulate, margins often ciliate. Corolla of 3 petals, yellow or white. Stamens 3(6), opposite the petals; filaments adnate to petals; anthers opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 3-carpellate; ovules orthotropous. style terminal, unlobed or 3-lobed.

Fruit: Capsules loculicidal or sometimes dehiscing irregularly. Seeds with copious; mealy; starchy or proteinaceous endosperm.

Ploidy:

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