The long strap-shaped leaves are evergreen and spring from thick branching roots or rhizomes. Like other members of the tribe Haemantheae to which it belongs, "Clivia" fruits are berries. When ripe, they contain large fleshy seeds which are often more than 1 cm in diameter. Specimens were collected by the British explorers William Burchell and John Bowie in 1815 and 1820, respectively. "Clivia nobilis" became the first named species when in 1828 the Kew botanist John Lindley named it in honor of Charlotte Percy (née Clive), Duchess of Northumberland (1787–1866), who was for a time the governess of the future Queen Victoria. Six genera have been placed in the tribe Haemantheae; all are found in Africa. 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). Four species of "Clivia" were included in the analysis; the single most parsimonious tree is shown below. The bulbless "Clivia" and "Cryptostephanus" appear to occupy a basal position within the clade. 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.  , six species are recognized by the "World Checklist of Selected Plant Families":  "C. mirabilis" was only named in 2000, and "C. robusta" even later, in 2004. Thus older sources frequently state that there are only four or five species. 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. Yellow plants can belong to one of two different groups which breed true for colour, producing seedlings with unpigmented stems and all yellow flowers when mature. When yellows from different groups are crossed, seedlings with pigmented stems occur and the resulting flowers are orange. "C. miniata", "C. gardenii", "C. robusta" and "C. caulescens" seedlings flower after four to five years. "C. nobilis" will flower after seven or eight years.