A typical character of the representatives of the tribe are the flowers - They are blue or lilac and collected into an umbel.

Only the members of this tribe and the genus Lycoris are able to form flowers with such color in the whole subfamily Amaryllidoideae of Amaryllidaceae.

The leaves are green, with elliptical form in most of the cases but in some members, as in Worsleya, they are sword-shaped.

[6] The Müller-Doblies' (1996) placed Griffinia in its own subtribe Griffiniinae (of tribe Hippeastreae) and did not recognise Worsleya, which they submerged in Phycella.

[7] Subsequently, molecular phylogenetic studies demonstrated that Griffineae was a distinct and separate tribe.