Placed in the Liliaceae in Michigan Flora. Many of our familiar forest understory lilies are in this family. The fruits are red, blue, or black berries, except in Uvularia, which has a capsule.

1. Leaves all in one or two whorls on the stem.

Medeola

1. Leaves alternate or basal.

2. Plants with the leaves all basal or nearly so; cauline leaves absent, reduced to bracts, or at most much smaller or fewer than basal leaves.

3. Flowers yellow, in an umbel; fruit blue.

Clintonia

3. Flowers white, in a raceme; fruit (rarely produced) orange or red.

Convallaria

2. Plants with leaves clearly cauline.

4. Plant unbranched.

5. Flowers in a terminal raceme or panicle, white, tepals separate; ripe fruit red, with dark stripes in one species.

Maianthemum

5. Flowers in the axils of leaves, greenish, greenish white, or yellowish, tepals united most of their length; ripe fruit blue to black.

Polygonatum

4. Plant branched (above the ground).

6. Perianth pale to deep yellow; fruit a glabrous capsule; stem and pedicels glabrous.

Uvularia

6. Perianth greenish, rose-purple, white, or creamy, fruit a pubescent to glabrate or tuberculate red berry; stem (at least when young) and pedicels often pubescent.

7. Leaves glabrous beneath; flowers axillary.

Streptopus

7. Leaves hairy beneath, at least on the veins, flowers terminal on the branches.

Prosartes