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 ripe capsule splitting along the midrib or dorsal suture into the cells loculicidal or splitting along the lines of junction of the carpels, i.e. along the septa (septicidal) or a berry.
BELLEVALIA
General description:- Glabrous, bulbous, with leafless stems bearing flowers
(scapose). Perennials.
Bulbs:- With a membranous tunic.
Leaves:- Several, all basal.
Flowers:- Inflorescence a raceme, with numerous white or blue to violet flowers which become brownish, greenish or yellowish after full flowering (anthesis). Bracts usually small, membranous. Perianth tubular, bell-shaped (campanulate) or funnel-shaped (infundibuliform), deeply divided into 6 more or less spreading (patent) lobes. Stamens 6, inserted at the base of the perianth-lobes; anthers held next to the perianth-segments, blue.
Fruit:- A capsule with three sharp angles (triquetrous) with 3 prominent ribs.
Key features:-
1) Perianth not constricted at mouth of tube, which is less than 4 times as long as the lobes.
2) Capsule triquetrous.
CHARYBDIS
General description:- Bulbous perennials.
Bulb:- Ovoid to globose, composed of numerous free scales.
Flowers:- Inflorescence a many-flowered raceme; each flower subtended by a bract and often a smaller bracteole. Perianth-segments free, with a dark mid-vein. Filaments slender or dilated at the base, inserted at base of perianth.
Fruit:- Capsule with three sharp angles (triquetrous). Seeds numerous, flattened, winged.
Key features:-
1) Green leaves present.
2) Leaves all basal (sometimes 1 or 2 sheathing the stem and appearing cauline).
3) Rootstock a bulb.
4) Seeds flat, winged.
5) Perianth-segments with a usually red or purple mid-vein.
MUSCARI
General description:- Glabrous, bulbous perennials.
Leaves:- (1-)2-7, all basal.
Flowers:- In terminal racemes or spikes, the apical flowers often sterile and differing in colour from the lower fertile flowers. Perianth globose to oblong-urn-shaped (urceolate) or bell-shaped (campanulate), usually constricted below the separation of the teeth, blue or brownish or yellow; teeth 6, short, often of different colour from the tube. Anthers (1-)2-seriate, included in the tube. Withered perianth detaching from the stems (abscissing) around the base as the capsule expands.
Fruit:- A capsule with sharply angled valves. Seeds 2 in each cell (loculus), black and shiny, usually minutely marked with a network pattern (reticulate).
Key features:-
1) Bracts minute or absent.
2) Perianth somewhat constricted at mouth of tube, which is at least 4 times as long as the lobes.
Subgen. BOTRYANTHUS
Bulb:- With slender, annual roots.
Flowers:- Fertile flowers globose to oblong-urceolate, not waisted, strongly constricted distally, blue to blackish, never striped. Sterile flowers few or absent, sessile to pedicellate, paler than fertile flowers.
Fruit:- Capsules splitting open on plant to release the seeds (dehiscent)
Subgen. LEOPOLDIA
Bulbs:- With slender, annual roots.
Flowers:- Fertile flowers tubular- or obconic-urceolate, strongly constricted distally, brownish or greenish, often more or less constricted near the middle, the shoulder not forming a corona. Sterile flowers blue or violet, often numerous and arranged in a prominent apical tuft.
Fruit:- Capsules usually splitting open to release the seeds (dehiscent) on the plant.
Subgen. PSEUDOMUSCARI
General description:- Roots slender, annual.
Flowers:- Fertile flowers shortly to oblong-campanulate, slightly constricted distally (in European species), pale blue, with dark markings; pedicels ascending (in European species). Sterile flowers many or few, sessile to pedicellate.
Fruit:- Capsules dehiscent on plant.
ORNITHOGALUM
General description:- Bulbous perennials.
Bulbs:- Usually ovoid, of free or concrescent, concentric scales, renewed each year or progressively over 2-4 years.
Leaves:- Basal.
Flowers:- in a corymbiform or elongate raceme. Perianth-segments 6, free or scarcely connate at the base, petaloid. Stamens 6; filaments simple or 3-dentate; anthers dorsifixed, introrse.
Fruit:- A loculicidal capsule; seeds numerous, globose to elongate-prismatic or flattened.
Key features:-
1) Seeds not winged and seldom flat.
2) Perianth-segments concolorous, or with a median green stripe.
3) Perianth white, variously tinged with yellow or green.
SCILLA/PROSPERO
General description:- Bulbous perennials.
Bulb:- Perennial, ovoid to globose, composed of numerous free scales, progressively renewed each year.
Flowers:- Solitary or in a raceme or corymb. Bracts 0 or 1 subtending each flower; bracteoles absent. Perianth-segments free, usually blue or purple, rarely white. Filaments free, usually slender, inserted at base of perianth.
Fruit:- Capsule subglobose, 3-lobed. Seeds 1-10 in each cell (loculus), globose to ellipsoid, unwinged.
Key features:-
1) Perianth blue, lilac or pink (rarely pure white).
2) Bracts single.