Aloes and Lilies of Ethiopia and Eritrea

172 AMARYLLIDACEAE
Conservation
Key to the species
produce small bulbs with contractile roots that drag them
into the soil. As subterranean small plants, rather than
seeds, they are able to survive the next dry season. In
mature plants most leaves are withering during the dry
season, the plant rapidly developing new leaves from
the base with the first rains. Flowers and fruits are then
developed during a fairly short time (facilitated by the
storage of water and nutrition in the large bulbs).
The genus has a great horticultural potential, and both
native and exotic species are grown as ornamentals.
The only near­endemic species, Crinum abyssinicum, is
widespread in Ethiopia and north Somalia, and probably
not threatened. For C. bambusetum, with few populations
in Ethiopia and unknown status in the Sudan, care should
be taken.
1. Inflorescence with 20–40 flowers, pedicels more than 2.5 cm long; flowers
star-shaped, with straight tube and reflexed free tepals 1. C. bambusetum
- Inflorescences with less than 15 flowers, flowers sessile to shortly pedicellate,
with curved tube and free tepals connivent, to form bells or funnels 2
2. Cultivated plants with a distinct false stem, constituted by the sheathing leaf
bases C. × powelli
- Plants from the wild without a distinct false stem 3
3. Leaves without a distinct midrib, undulate with scabrid margin, only few young
leaves with intact apices; 7–14 flowers, subsessile or pedicels up to 2 cm,
inflorescence subtended by early withering and drooping bracts
2. C. macowanii
- Leaves with a distinct midrib, not undulate, without scabrid margin, not
undulate, most leaves with intact apices, flowers 2–7 (–9), sessile, subtended
by more or less erect involucral bracts 4
4. Leaves green, not glaucous; tepals with a sharply bordered broad dark reddish
band, visible on both sides of the segment 3. C. ornatum
- Leaves glaucous; tepals pure white or slightly pink flushed outside in apical
parts, pure white on the inside 4. C. abyssinicum