Small perennial or annual mycorrhizal herbs that are achlorophyllous (lacking chlorophyll) and mycotrophic or less often autotrophic.
[17] Johri et al. treat the 17 families of order Liliiflorae as distributed over 5 suborders, including Burmanniineae Engl..
[19] Later, Burmanniales was included by Takhtajan in the 2009 revision of his system with the same family structure, as an order of superorder Lilianae (as the Liliiflorae were renamed).
[9] Historically the Burmanniales were considered the closest to the orchids, being epigynous with small seeds, although this was not supported when subjected to cladistic analysis,[20][21] suggesting these characteristics were actually convergent.
[22] Phylogenetic analysis showed that Burmanniales was actually polyphyletic,[23][24] resulting in a redistribution of the families between the Liliales and Dioscoreales orders.