Description: Mat-forming perennial herbs, roots fibrous with rhizomes.
Leaves cauline, distichous, with membranous open sheath broader than lamina.
Inflorescences subsessile, surrounded by 2–4 bract-like reduced leaves; flowers solitary, terminal. Tepals 6, subequal, free, outer 5-veined, inner 3-veined, not twisting after flowering, persisting around developing fruit. Stamens 6; filaments puberulous; anthers introrse, basifixed, dehiscing by slits. Ovary 3-locular; ovules numerous per loculus; style cylindrical, narrowing to a small stigma.
Fruit a capsule, somewhat trigonous, loculicidal to about halfway; seeds smooth, glossy black with long narrow hilum scar.
Distribution and occurrence: World: 1 species, Australia & New Zealand. Australia: 1 sp (native).
Herpolirion is sometimes placed in the family Hemerocallidaceae.
Text by S. McCune & D.W. Hardin
Taxon concept:
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