Geosiris aphylla Baillon

First description by Baillon (1894), already as a member of the Iridaceae, although Baillon recognized superficial similarities to the Burmanniaceae. Geosiris, with representatives on Madagascar (G. aphylla), Mayotte (G. albiflora) and Queensland/Australia (G. australiensis), is the only mycoheteretrophic genus in Iridaceae. Systematically it has been treated as a member of Iridaceae, Burmanniaceae (Engler 1897, admittedly withouth having seen a specimen) or as a family of its own (Jonker 1939, see Rübsamen-Weustenfeld et al. 1994 for a systematical review). Within the Iridaceae Geosiris has been considered as Nivenioideae (Goldblatt et al. 1987, Goldblatt 1990, Reeves et al. 1997, Goldblatt et al. 1998), but recently a position in its own subfamily Geosiridoideae, as already suggested earlier (e.g. Thorne 1983), has been confirmed (Goldblatt et al. 2008). Accepted as a species by all these authors.