Individual flowers are more or less bell-shaped, occurring in umbels on a stalk above the foliage; colors typically range from yellow through orange to red.

They are typically forest undergrowth plants, adapted to low light (with the exception of C. mirabilis from the Western Cape).

[6] A distinctive feature of Clivia – shared with the closely related genus Cryptostephanus – is that unlike most species in the subfamily, it does not form bulbs.

[1] It was named in honor of Charlotte Percy (née Clive), Duchess of Northumberland (1787–1866),[7][1][8] who was for a time the governess of the future Queen Victoria.

Molecular phylogenetic analysis carried out in 2004 showed that the tribe is monophyletic (i.e. it contains all the descendants of a single common ancestor).

Meerow and Clayton suggest that a forest understorey habitat, associated with the absence of bulbs and the presence of fruits which are berries, may have been a factor in the evolutionary divergence of the Haemantheae clade from the rest of the subfamily Amaryllidoideae.

[4] As of January 2012[update], six species are recognized by the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families:[12] C. mirabilis was only named in 2000, and C. robusta even later, in 2004.

Of the species, Clivia miniata is the most widely cultivated; cultivars with flowers ranging from deep red-orange to pale yellow have been bred by growers.

When yellows from different groups are crossed, seedlings with pigmented stems occur and the resulting flowers are orange.