Usually perennial herbs, sometimes of large size. Rootstock bulbous, tuberous, tufted or creeping. Leaves generally all radical, narrow, not usually equitant or distichous. Flowers regular or slightly irregular, hermaphrodite, in terminal umbels or racemes or panicles, rarely solitary; peduncles or scapes naked or bracteate. Perianth superior, petaloid, tube long or short, limb 6-lobed or -partite, sometimes bearing at the throat a petaloid corona (Narcis-sus, &c). Stamens 6, inserted on the perianth-tube or at the base of the segments and opposite to them; filaments free or united at the base; anthers 2-celled, versatile, introrse. Ovary inferior, 3-celled; style filiform or columnar, stigma simple or 3-fid; ovules numerous, in 2 series in the inner angle of each cell, ana-tropous. Fruit usually a 3-celled capsule with loculicidal dehis-cence, rarely an indehiscent berry. Seeds generally numerous, sometimes reduced to 1 or 2 in each cell; albumen fleshy; embryo small, axile.

A well-known and widely distributed order, found in all warm and temperate countries, but (like the preceding family) decidedly rare in Asia. Genera 65; species under 700. It includes the American aloe (Agave americana), which can be applied to a wonderful variety of uses. Both it and other species of A gave are valuable fibre-plants, A. rigida being the well-known sisal hemp. page 701The ornamental species are very numerous, the principal genera being Narcissus, Galanthus (snowdrop), Leucoium (snowflake), Hippeastrum, Amaryllis, Vallota, Crinum, Alstrcsmeria, Agave, Fourcroya. The single genus found in New Zea-land is widely diffused.