Green or glaucous scapose perennials with onion- or garlic-like odour. Bulb tunicate, solitary, or often with stipitate offset bulbs. Leaves 1-many, all basal, sheathing scapes to varying levels, usually linear, solid or hollow. Flowers white, yellow or pink, campanulate, in few- to many-flowered terminal involucrate umbels; spathe-valves 2, ± united; bulbils often present between flowers, occasionally replacing them; perianth-segments free or ± connate at base. Staminal-filaments simple, divided, or with lateral appendages. Capsule ovoid to globose, 3-lobed, loculicidal. Seeds black, ± angular to flat, usually 6. Spp. c. 450, widely distributed in N. Hemisphere, mainly in temperate regions. Adventive spp. 4.