Liliaceae Juss.
Perennial, erect or climbing herbs, rarely softly woody shrubs, with rhizomes, corms, or tunicate or scaly bulbs, roots sometimes tuberous. Leaves all basal, or cauline, or reduced to scales. Flowers bisexual, rarely unisexual, actinomorphic, in racemes, panicles, corymbs, terminal spathaceous umbels, or solitary. Perianth mostly petaloid, with or without tube; lobes usually 6 in 2 very similar whorls. Stamens usually 6, hypogynous or adnate to tepals; anther 2-locular, usually opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior or shortly adnate to perianth-tube, 3-locular with axile placentae (1-locular in some spp. of Astelia); ovules usually many, 2-seriate in each locule, rarely solitary. Fruit a loculicidal or septicidal capsule, or berry. Worldwide, of some 175 genera.
† Treated in Vol. II. ζ See note below key.
Key
Hutchinson (Fam. Flow. Plants 2, 1959, 639) transferred the tribes Agapantheae and Allieae (subfamily Allioideae) of the Liliaceae to the Amaryllidaceae, regarding ". . . the type of inflorescence, umbellate, with an involucre of bracts, to be of greater taxonomic importance and to give a more natural grouping than the superior or inferior ovary, the only character formerly separating the families Liliaceae and Amaryllidaceae." Other authors, e.g. Sen (Feddes Repert. 86 1975, 291), consider it reasonable to treat Agapantheae and Allieae in a distinct family Alliaceae separate from the Amaryllidaceae but closely allied to it and to Liliaceae. Further work may yet clarify the relationships between different families in the order Liliales and between different subfamilies and tribes in the family Liliaceae and at present it seems best to us not to separate the genera of subfamily Allioideae growing wild in N.Z. - Agapanthus, Allium and Nothoscordum - from the Liliaceae.
Lachenalia has been recorded growing wild in North Auckland by Martin (J. Roy. N.Z. Inst. Hort. n.s. 2, 5, 1971,215); "Freesias and Lachenalias in particular establishing themselves and often threading up hedgerows and filling the place with perfume and colour." No specimens have been seen.
