LILIA CEAE 
44i 
of flowering plants; 200 gen. with 2500 sp., cosmop. The smaller 
groups of the order are often confined to definite floral regions. Most 
are herbs with sympodial rhizomes or bulbs; a few trop. and warm 
temp, forms, e.g. Yucca, Dracaena, &c., are shrubs or trees, often 
with an unusual mode of growth in thickness of the stem. Many are 
xerophytes; some, e.g. Aloe and Gasteria, are succulent; others, e.g. 
Phormium, have hard isobilateral leaves; others, e.g. Dasylirion, 
have tuberous stems and narrow leaves with reduced transpiration; 
Bowiea only produces leafy shoots in the wet season, and so on. 
Smilax, Gloriosa, &c. are climbing plants, the former with peculiar 
stipular tendrils. Ruscus exhibits phylloclades. 
The infl. is most commonly of racemose construction, and the flrs. 
have no bracteoles ; when the latter occur, the further branching from 
their axils usually takes a cymose form, especially that of a bostryx 
(p. 65), as e.g. in Hemerocallis. The apparent umbels or heads 
of Allium, Agapanthus, &c. are really cymose (p. 65). Solitary 
terminal flrs. occur in tulip, &c. The flrs. are usually $ , regular, 
pentacyclic, 3-merous (rarely 2, 4, or 5), hypogynous. P 3 + 3, free or 
united, petaloid or sometimes sepaloid; A 3 + 3 or fewer, rarely more, 
usually with introrse anthers; G (3) usually superior, rarely inferior 
or semi-inferior, 3-loc. with axile, or rarely i-loc. with parietal pla- 
centae; ovules usually 00, in two rows in each loc., anatropous. 
Fruit usually capsular, loculicidal or septicidal, sometimes a berry. 
Seed with straight or curved embryo, in abundant fleshy or cartilagi- 
nous, never floury, endosperm. 
The flrs. are usually insect-pollinated. Honey is often (e.g. in 
Scilla, Allium, &c.) secreted by glands in the ovary- wall between the 
cpls.; in other cases by glands on the bases of the perianth-leaves 
(see Muller’s Fert. of Firs, and Alpenblumen for general account of 
L.). Yucca (q.v.) has a unique pollination-method. The seed-dis- 
persal mechanisms, with the exception of the few cases of fleshy fruits, 
are of low type. 
Economically the L. are of no great value. The chief food plants 
are Allium and Asparagus; Phormium, Yucca, and Sansevieria yield 
useful fibre; Smilax, Urginea, Aloe, Colchicum, Veratrum, &c., are 
medicinal. Xanthorrhoea and Dracaena yield resins; Chlorogalum is 
used as soap. Many are favourite garden and greenhouse plants, 
e.g. Convallaria, Tulipa, Fritillaria, Lilium, Agapanthus, Kniphofia, 
Funkia, Hyacinthus, Gloriosa, and many more. 
Classification and chief genei'a (after Engler) : the L. are closely 
allied to Juncaceae; usually they can be distinguished by their peta- 
loid perianth, that of J. being sepaloid, but many L. have a sepaloid 
perianth, e.g. Xanthorrhoea, Kingia, &c., and in these cases almost 
the only distinction is the absence in L. of the long thread-like 
twisted stigmas of J. Benth.-Hooker unite the genera mentioned, 
and some others, to Juncaceae, and they place sub-orders vm and IX 
