Aristea Aiton "Small to large evergreen or seasonal perennials with a thick or slender rhizome; leaves lanceolate to linear or terete; flowering stem sometimes compressed or winged, variously branched or simple; inflorescences composed of 1-many binate rhipidia arranged in panicles or crowded in fascicles on short branches; flowers usually fugaceous, stellate, usually shades of blue, occasionally white or mauve, without nectar or rarely with perigonal nectaries; tepals occasionally with contrasting marks, basally connate, subequal or the inner or outer whorl smaller; style deflexed barely divided apically or broadly 3- winged; seeds several to many and angular to cylindric with oblique ends or 1- 2 per locule, often compressed radically arillate; x=16. About 50 spp., sub-Saharan Africa including Madagascar." Kubitzki " Families and Genera of Vascular Plants Volume III Flowering Plants Monocotyledons" Enjoy Arnold