白及属 bai ji shu

Authors:Authors: Xinqi Chen, Stephan W. Gale & Phillip J. Cribb

Jimensia Rafinesque.

Herbs, terrestrial. Rhizome tuberous, irregularly shaped, with many long, fibrous roots. Stem erect, enclosed by tubular sheaths, leafy. Leaves 2-6, erect or suberect, plicate, narrowly oblong-lanceolate to linear-lanceolate. Inflorescence erect, terminal, racemose, few flowered, glabrous; peduncle terete, usually with 1 or more short sterile bracts; rachis short, somewhat flexuous, simple or occasionally branched; floral bracts lanceolate, caducous. Flowers resupinate, showy, white, pink, purple, or yellow; pedicel and ovary cylindric, slender. Sepals and petals similar, free, spreading; lip 3-lobed above middle, porrect, not spurred; lateral lobes erect and embracing column; disk with 3 or 5 lamellate ridges. Column arcuate, slender, winged, lacking a column foot; anther subterminal, incumbent, 2-locular; pollinia 8, in 2 groups of 4, oblong and laterally compressed, equal in size or one group slightly smaller, granular-farinaceous, with inconspicuous caudicles and viscidia; stigma suborbicular to transversely elliptic, lying directly below rostellum; rostellum truncate, projecting forward over stigma. Capsule erect, oblong-fusiform.

About six species: from N Myanmar and Indochina through China to Japan; four species in China.