Common Name: Hairbells, fairybells
Description: Tufted, evergreen perennial herbs, glabrous; corm depressed-globose, tunic fibrous.
Leaves several, mostly basal, linear, equitant, flat, tough, fibrous; cauline leaves few. Scape tall, slender, arching, with several pendent, wiry branches; lateral branches subtended by elongate membranous bracts; spikes lax, pendent, few-flowered; spathe bracts dry and membranous, often lacerate, colourless or flecked brown; inner 2-fid; spathes 1-flowered.
Flowers pendent, actinomorphic. Perianth tube straight, funnel-shaped; lobes usually with diamond-shaped eye at inside base. Stamens included; anthers regularly spaced around style. Style included, filiform, 3-branched; branches short, entire, becoming recurved.
Capsule ovoid to globose, shallowly 3-lobed, firm but thin; seeds few, globose or slightly angled, glossy.
Distribution and occurrence: World: 44 species, southern & tropical East Africa. Australia: 2 species (naturalized), N.S.W., S.A.
Text by T. A. James & E. A. Brown
Taxon concept:
| | Key to the species | |
| 1 | Perianth rounded at base above tube and immediately widening upwards | Dierama pendulum |
| Perianth with base either conical immediately above the tube and spreading slightly or rounded above the tube and almost parallel sided | Dierama pulcherrimum |
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