It is a family of over thirty species Plants with a corm covered with fibrous tunics. Leaves are in two erect ranks, deciduous. Inflorescence is simple or branched in a dense or loose spike. Stems are thin and wiry. The flowers have a long or short perianth tube and more or less equal spreading segments.
Fruit is a capsule of small, brown, angled seeds.
The name Ixia is derived from an old Greek name for a plant noted for the variability of its coloring. Several species are commonly known in South Africa as klossies or kalossies, and a few as koring-blommetjies. The information below is reprinted from a previous article as it is relevant to our current discussion. And you may not have read the previous one. Unfortunately, as happened in most genera of the South African Iridaceae, several of the better known species soon became involved in mis-identifications and considerable confusion, much of which has persisted to this day.