Description: Tufted, herbaceous perennial herbs with tuberous corm; roots fleshy-fibrous or tuberous.
Leaves distichous and usually crowded at base of stem, linear, acute, sheathing slightly at base.
Inflorescence terminal, racemose, 1–20-flowered with flowers pendent, each subtended by 1 bract and a smaller bracteole; peduncle with leaf-like bracts. Flowers ± actinomorphic, 3-merous, bisexual. Perianth petaloid, tepals 6 in 2 whorls, fused into a tube for four-fifths of their length, red to yellow; lobes 6. Stamens 6 in 2 whorls; filaments fused to perianth tube; anthers linear, versatile, included or slightly exserted, latrorse, dehiscing by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, stipitate, 3-locular; ovules numerous, in 2 rows per loculus; placentation axile; style linear; stigma capitate but slightly 3-lobed.
Fruit a septicidal capsule, ± fusiform, stipitate, erect, prominently 3-angled; seeds numerous, linear, brown papillose-hairy.
Distribution and occurrence: World: 4 species, endemic Australia. Australia: Qld, N.S.W., Tas.
Text by A. L. Quirico
Taxon concept:
| | Key to the species | |
| 1 | Flowers 2–3.5 cm long; perianth tube more or less evenly cylindrical in upper half, to c. 1 cm wide near throat; anthers less than 3 mm long | Blandfordia nobilis |
| Flowers 3–6 cm long; perianth tube bell-shaped, more than 1 cm wide near throat; anthers usually more than 3 mm long | 2 |
| 2 | Margins of leaves crenulate-scabrid, flat or more or less involute or revolute; inflorescence usually loosely racemose, mostly less than 12-flowered | Blandfordia grandiflora |
| Margins of leaves entire, smooth, slightly revolute; inflorescence clustered, usually more than 15-flowered
Back to 1 | Blandfordia cunninghamii |
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