General description:- Perennial herbs, often with bulbs, corms, rhizomes or tuberous roots; sometimes climbers, rarely annuals or small shrubs.
Flowers:- Usually in racemes or panicles, more rarely solitary or in cymes or umbels, regular or slightly zygomorphic, usually hermaphrodite. Perianth of two whorls, each of (2-)3(-5) usually petaloid segments, free or variously united (connate). Stamens usually as many as perianth-segments, free or connate. Ovary 3-celled (3-locular), superior (very rarely 1-locular or semi-inferior); styles 1 or 3(-5).
Fruit:- A loculicidal (when a ripe capsule splits into the cells) or septicidal (when a ripe capsule splits along the lines of junction of the carpels) capsule or a berry.
Genus: COLCHICUM
General description:- Perennial herbs.
Stock:- A corm, occasionally stoloniferous, enclosed by tunics which are frequently extended into a neck above the corm.
Flowers:- Solitary or in fascicles, each subtended by a small bract and very shortly pedicellate, purple, pink or white, sometimes with alternating squares of dark and light colour (tessellated). Perianth of two rows of equal or subequal segments united below into a long, narrow tube. Stamens inserted near the base of the perianth-segments, usually in two rows; anthers versatile; filaments slender, frequently thickened at the base. Styles 3, free. Ovary subterranean.
Fruit:- A septicidal capsule, maturing at or just above ground-level. Seeds numerous.
Key features:-
1) Styles 3, free from the base.
2) Perianth-segments connate below, forming a long, slender tube.