Greek agape – love, anthos – flower.
Perennial rhizomatous thick-rooted herbs. Leaves perennial or deciduous, flat, strap-like, almost succulent. Flowers bilaterally symmetrical, stalked. Inflorescences terminal, simple, umbellate. Tepals 3+3, fused for part of their length, blue or white. Stamens 6, fused to tube. Fruit a dehiscent capsule. Seeds flattened, winged, black.
Grown for the attractive heads of mostly blue flowers in gardens and for public display, often as a border plant in full sun.
Recent interest has resulted in the selection of a range of cultivars.
In suitable conditions plants occasionally become weedy by spread of seed.
Rhizomatous herbs with tall umbels of bilaterally symmetrical flowers with superior ovaries and with the umbel enclosed by two fused bracts while in bud.
10 species from southern Africa, some plants in cultivation are possibly of hybrid origin.
Leighton (1965), Duncan (1985, 1998), Snoeijer (1998).
Source: (2005). Agapanthaceae. In: . Horticultural Flora of South-eastern Australia. Volume 5. Flowering plants. Monocotyledons. The identification of garden and cultivated plants. University of New South Wales Press.
