''Atacamallium minutiflorum'' is a species of

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (). The term angiosperm is derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek words (; 'container, vessel') and (; 'seed'), meaning that the seeds are enclosed with ...

in the family

Amaryllidaceae The Amaryllidaceae are a family of herbaceous, mainly perennial and bulbous (rarely rhizomatous) flowering plants in the monocot order Asparagales. The family takes its name from the genus '' Amaryllis'' and is commonly known as the amaryl ...

. It is the sole species in genus ''Atacamallium''. It is a

bulbous In botany, a bulb is a short underground stem with fleshy leaves or leaf basesBell, A.D. 1997. ''Plant form: an illustrated guide to flowering plant morphology''. Oxford University Press, Oxford, U.K. that function as food storage organs duri ...

geophyte A storage organ is a part of a plant specifically modified for storage of energy (generally in the form of carbohydrates) or water. Storage organs often grow underground, where they are better protected from attack by herbivores. Plants that have ...

endemic to

Antofagasta Region The Antofagasta Region (, ) is one of Chile's Administrative divisions of Chile, sixteen first-order administrative divisions. Being the second-largest region of Chile in area, it comprises three provinces, Antofagasta Province, Antofagasta, El ...

of northern Chile,''Atacamallium minutiflorum'' R.Pinto & Nic.García
''

Plants of the World Online Plants of the World Online (POWO) is an online taxonomic database published by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. History Following the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew launched Plants of the World Online i ...

''. Retrieved 21 May 2024. where it grows in the coastal

Atacama Desert The Atacama Desert () is a desert plateau located on the Pacific Ocean, Pacific coast of South America, in the north of Chile. Stretching over a strip of land west of the Andes Mountains, it covers an area of , which increases to if the barre ...

.García, N., Sassone, A.B., Pinto, R. and Román, M.J. (2022), ''Atacamallium minutiflorum'' (Amaryllidaceae, Allioideae), new genus and species from the coastal desert of northern Chile. ''Taxon'', 71: 552-562. https://doi.org/10.1002/tax.12684 DNA and morphological analyses place it as a sister to genus '' Leucocoryne'' in the tribe

Leucocoryneae Gilliesieae is a tribe of herbaceous geophyte plants belonging to the subfamily Allioideae of the Amaryllis family (Amaryllidaceae). Described in 1826, it contains fifteen genera and about eighty species. It has been variously treated as a subfa ...

. It is distinguished from other Leucocoryneae by having smaller flowers,

tepal A tepal is one of the outer parts of a flower (collectively the perianth). The term is used when these parts cannot easily be classified as either sepals or petals. This may be because the parts of the perianth are undifferentiated (i.e. of very ...

s fused only at the base, six stamens arranged in a single series, and trifid (three-lobed) stigma.

References

{{Taxonbar, from= Q123471134, from2=Q126011597 Allioideae Monotypic Amaryllidaceae genera Flora of northern Chile Endemic flora of Chile Plants described in 2022