Asparagaceae

Abstract

Erect or scandent, mostly glabrous herbaceous or subshrubby perennials with persistent, evergreen or annually withering branches growing from a compact or creeping, sympodial rhizome or rarely a tuber (A. ovatum and A. undulatum); cataphylls small or vestigial. Roots cylindrical or fusiform, lateral roots sometimes tuberous, covered by a multiple velamen. Stems erect or voluble, their branches often patent; leaves on long shoots and short shoots (if the latter present) scalelike, scariose, spurred at the base and subtending solitary or clustered phylloclades, the latter leaflike to angled or terete, rarely (A. densiflorus) bearing minute, reduced scale leaves; spines present or absent, formed from modified leaf spurs or branches. Flowers in fascicles or borne singly, bisexual, or unisexual and monoecious or dioecious, pendulous or erect, on articulated pedicels, the pericladium separated from pedicel by a swelling; tepals 6, free and spreading or basally fused and then forming a cup or tube; stamens 6, free from each other, fused to tepals, or sometimes outer stamens basally adnate, diminute and nonfunctional in pistillate flowers; filaments free, filamentous or flattened; anthers bithecate, sagittate, ± basifixed, introrse, dehiscing by slits; ovary superior, trilocular, sometimes slightly stipitate; style with 3 short stigmatic branches or a capitate or lobate stigma of the Dry or Wet type; ovules axile, 2–12 per locule, hemianatropous or almost atropous, bitegmic, crassinucellate; septal nectaries present; fruit a berry, rarely a nut, red, blue, or black or brown; seed coat black; endosperm containing aleurone, fat and hemicellulose but no starch; embryo slightly curved, nearly reaching the length of endosperm.