Description: Perennial herbs, roots with stalked or sessile tubers.
Leaves radical, linear, flat, often withering early; leaf fibres from previous seasons often present.
Inflorescence racemose or paniculate, scapose; flowers usually 1–9 per node, sometimes secund; pedicels spreading to nodding, usually articulate. Tepals free, rotate to reflexed, not twisting after flowering, pale blue, purple or white; outer tepals narrow, 3–5-veined; inner tepals elliptic to circular. Stamens 6; filaments hirsute; anthers introrse to latrorse, dehiscing by longitudinal slits. Ovules 1–5 per loculus; style simple.
Fruit a capsule, sometimes enclosed by perianth; seeds globose to angular, black.
Distribution and occurrence: World: 11 species, Australia, New Zealand & New Caledonia, Madagascar. Australia: 7 species (endemic), all states except N.T.
Text by J. G. Conran, S. McCune & D. W. Hardin
Taxon concept:
| | Key to the species | |
| 1 | Flowers 2 or more per node | 2 |
| Flowers 1 per node | Arthropodium minus |
| 2 | Inner tepals fimbriate | Arthropodium sp. A sensu Harden (1993) |
| Inner tepals not fimbriate
Back to 1 | 3 |
| 3 | Filament hairs purple, leaves glaucose | Arthropodium milleflorum |
| Filament hairs white, leaves not glaucous
Back to 2 | Arthropodium sp. B sensu Harden (1993) |
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