Szechenyia Kanitz.

Herbs perennial, small, bulbiferous. Bulbs ovoid to globose, covered with a tunic, distally sometimes with a collar of persistent leaf bases, basally sometimes with bulbels. Stem usually simple. Leaves basal or also cauline, linear or filiform. Inflorescence usually umbellate, corymbose, or racemose, less often reduced to a solitary flower, basally usually subtended by a bract; bracteole 1. Flowers bisexual. Tepals 6, free, in 2 whorls, yellow or yellow-green, very rarely white or other color, persistent, ± indurescent and accrescent in fruit. Stamens 6, equal or 3 longer; filaments filiform or proximally widened and flat; anthers basifixed. Ovary 3-loculed; ovules many per locule. Style usually rather long; stigma capitate or 3-lobed. Fruit a capsule, 3-angled, loculicidal, surrounded by enlarged, persistent tepals. Seeds many, globose to flat.

About 90 species: temperate regions of N Africa, Asia and Europe, mainly in C Asia and the Mediterranean region; 17 species (one endemic) in China.

(Authors: Chen Xinqi (陈心启 Chen Sing-chi); Nicholas J. Turland)