Aloes and Lilies of Ethiopia and Eritrea

110 ALOACEAE
Distribution and
classification
ASPHODELACEAE
This family is sometimes defined to include Aloaceae.
In the restricted sense it includes herbaceous plants
where the underground organ is a rhizome, which,
when cut, is yellowish inside. The leaves are arranged
in a basal rosette. The peduncle (scape) is leafless. The
inflorescence is unbranched, each flower subtended by
a single bract. The pedicels are generally without a joint
(except in Asphodelus). The flowers are regular with fused
(in Kniphofia) or free (in all other genera) tepals, which
may be white, greenish, yellow, pink or red. The stamens
have filiform filaments, which are glabrous to scabrous
(in Kniphofia and Trachyandra) or hairy (in Bulbine and
Jodrellia), free or partly fused with the perianth. The
anthers release the pollen inwards (introrse dehiscence).
The carpels are united to form a 3­locular ovary with 2 to
several ovules per cell, fixed on a central column (axile
placentation). There are septal glands in the ovary. The
style is slender with a small stigma. The fruit is generally
a loculicidal capsule, rarely (in Jodrellia) without opening
mechanisms. An extra cell layer (aril), covering the black
seed coat, makes the seeds dull and sometimes glutinose,
brownish to greyish. This aril may sometimes generate a
wing­like structure around the seeds.
Asphodelaceae is an Old World tropical to temperate
family with 15 genera and about 750 species, distributed
in arid and mesic regions of the temperate, subtropical
and tropical zones of the Old World, with the main
centre of diversity in southern Africa. It is represented
by 4 genera and 11 species in Ethiopia. The genus
Kniphofia has flowers very similar to those of Aloe, the
genera only differ in their leaf morphology and anatomy.
Representatives of Asphodelaceae may sometimes be
difficult to distinguish from Anthericaceae on morphology
alone (especially the genus Trachyandra, which up to
the 1960s even was included in the genus Anthericum).
The internally yellowish rhizomes (due to the content
of anthraquinons) and brownish to greyish seeds are