Monocot Family: Liliaceae (Lily Family)

Liliaceae (Lily family), in the old wide sense used by Bentham and Hooker, comprises about 15 genera and 550 species distributed worldwide - but APG narrows the family down to just Lilium and Tulipa, reassigning Allium, Gloriosa, Smilax, Asparagus, Scilla, Aloe and Dracaena to other families (e.g. Allium cepa moves to Amaryllidaceae under APG). Habit: mostly perennial herbs persisting by a sympodial rhizome (Polygonatum), a bulb (Lilium) or a corm (Colchicum); shrubby/tree-like (Yucca, Dracaena); woody climbers using stipular tendrils (Smilax); succulents (Aloe). Root: adventitious, fibrous, typically contractile. Leaf: radical (Lilium) or cauline (Dracaena), usually parallel-veined (reticulate in Smilax), usually exstipulate (though Smilax bears two tendrils from the leaf base, considered modified stipules). Inflorescence: simple/branched racemes, spikes (Aloe), a huge terminal panicle (Yucca), or solitary (Gloriosa, Tulipa). Flower: often showy, usually ebracteolate, bisexual, actinomorphic (slightly zygomorphic in Lilium), trimerous, hypogynous. Perianth: 6 tepals, biseriate, apotepalous (rarely syntepalous, as in Aloe), usually petaloid. Androecium: 6 stamens in 2 whorls of 3 (rarely 3, 4 or up to 12), opposite the tepals, dithecous anthers dehiscing usually by vertical slits. Gynoecium: tricarpellary, syncarpous, usually superior (rarely inferior in Haemodorum), trilocular, axile placentation, nectar-secreting septal glands present. Fruit: usually a capsule, or a berry (Asparagus, Smilax).

Allium cepa (onion) has an underground bulb stem, a cluster of cylindrical fleshy radical leaves, a scapigerous inflorescence (a peduncle from the ground bearing an equal-level cluster of flowers), 6 white syntepalous tepals, 6 epitepalous stamens, and a tricarpellary superior ovary with axile placentation - floral formula Br.,Ebrl., , ,P(3+3)+A3+3,G(3). …