Eriospermum is a genus of tuberous monocots, vaguely related to the lily family.  There are about a hundred species, all found in sub-Saharan Africa.  The genus is most diverse in western and southern South Africa, in semi-arid to desert habitats that receive winter rain (Namaqualand and the Little Karoo). The plants from these areas grow in autumn and winter, and die back to their tubers for a long dormant period during the warmer months.  My discussion will focus on these winter-growing eriospermums, since they include the most interesting species, and are the ones that I am most familiar with.
 

     Eriospermum plants consist of a subterranean, potato-like tuber, which produces flowers and leaves above-ground during the growing season.  The tubers of many species have only a single growing point. The growing point, in some cases, is on the lower side of the tuber, facing down into the ground and connected to a fibrous tube of old leaf bases, which grows up and around the tuber to the soil surface.  In early autumn, a raceme of pale flowers emerges through this tube.  The inflorescence sets seed and then withers, and is followed later by a single leaf which lasts for the entire growing season.  The leaf may be a simple, heart-shaped structure, though in many species (like E. sabulosum, above) the leaf is covered with bifurcating protrusions called "enations."

     The peculiar structures seen within Eriospermum, like downward growing tubers, leaf enations, and white, hairy seeds, are not found in any conceivably related group of monocots, and provide no clues to the evolutionary position of the genus.  It was placed in the family Liliaceae back in the days when Liliaceae was a catch-all group for just about any petaloid monocots that weren't orchids.  These days it's often placed in its own family, Eriospermaceae.  Evidence from DNA sequencing and morphology indicates that eriospermums arose as an early branch of the line leading to Convallaria (lily of the valley), Ruscus, Sansevieria (snake plant) and Polygonatum (solomon's seal), among other genera.  The familial arrangement of this group doesn't quite seem to have gelled at this point, but Eriospermum might best be thought of as an aberrant, basal member of the family Ruscaceae or Convallariaceae.
(For more information on the evolutionary relationships of Eriospermum and its allies, see P.J. Rudall, J. Conran & M. Chase  (2000)  Systematics of the Ruscaceae/Convallariaceae: a combined morphological and molecular investigation.  Bot. J. of the Linnean Soc.  134:73-92.)

       As far as I know, there are no English common names for either eriospermums in general or for particular species. If anyone knows otherwise, or feels like making some up, drop me a line! One might call E. paradoxum the "squirrel-tail plant," for instance (see my watercolor at left .) In Afrikaans, members of the genus are called bobbejaanui, the English equivalent of which (baboon onions) is uninspiring.