Herbs usually with bulbs and contractile roots;steroidal saponins often present.Especially dryish temperature and warm.Perennial often geophytic herbs,usually with alks,and often with starchy rhizome,bulb or korm,vessels usually only in roots, which usually have no root-hairs.
Floral characters
Inflourescences usually determinate,sometimes reduced to a single flower,terminal.Flowers bisexual,radial to slightly bilateral,conspicuous.Tepals 6 ,distinct , imbricate , petaloid , often with spots or lines. Stamens 6 ; filaments distinct;pollen grains usually monosulcate.Carpels 3 ,connate;ovary superior,with axile placentation;stigma i,3-lobed, or 3, +/- elongated branches.Ovules numerous,usually with 1 integument and a +/- thin megasporangium;megagametophyte developing from 4 megaspores (Fritillaria type ),with some cells haploid and others triploid.Nectar produced at base of tepals.
Leaf characters
Leaves alternate or whorled,along stem or in basal rosette,simple,entire,with parallel venation,sheathing at base.
Stipules
absent
Fruit characters
Fruit a loculicidal capsule,occasionally a berry; seeds usually flat and diskshaped,seed coat not black; endosperm oily,its cells pentaploid.
Hairs
Present, simple
Distribution maps
(online von http://www.mobot.org/MOBOT/research/APweb/ . Dort zitiert wie unter jedem Diagramm vermerkt):
