their volume on the Liliaceae in Latin in 1883. They divided the family into 20 tribes and placed Ornithogalum in the tribe Scilleae with 19 other genera, and indicated 70 species existed. In the German literature the taxonomic system of Engler completed its classification of the Liliaceae in 1888. He divided the family into 12 subfamilies and subordinate tribes. Ornithogalum was then placed in the subfamily Lilioideae and tribe Scilleae together with 21 other genera. The 70 species of Ornithogalum were then further divided into six sections, with section Heliocharmos corresponding to Baker's subgenus. Ornithogalum is one of four genera in the tribe Ornithogaleae, the largest tribe within the subfamily Scilloideae of the Asparagaceae. Historically, it was treated as part of the subfamily Ornithogaloideae of Hyacinthaceae, now obsolete terms. The preferred treatment is to consider the Hyacinthaceae as subfamily Scilloideae of the Asparagaceae. The original subfamilies within Hyacinthaceae became tribes of subfamily Scilloideae. Thus subfamily Ornithogaloideae became tribe Ornithogaleae. The precise taxonomy of the Ornithogaloideae/Ornithogaleae has been problematic since at least the time of Linnaeus. The Ornithogaloideae were one of four major clades within the Hyacinthaceae. Phylogenetic analysis subsumed all of that subfamily into the genus Ornithogalum with about 300 species. This sensu lato reduction of Speta's 14 genera into one was not widely accepted, though they were polyphyletic, and had a number of problems. (This also had the effect of eliminating Galtonia as a genus, under which a number of Ornithogalum species are still sold.) Further analysis with wider sampling (70 compared to 40 taxa) and a third plastid region (matK) revealed the presence of three clades (A, B and C) within Ornithogaleae/Ornithogalum. Consequently, a new classification was proposed with three tribes and four genera, Ornithogalum corresponding to clade C, placed in tribe Ornithogaleae, but further subdivided into subgenera and sections, with 160 species. Galtonia was retained as a taxon, but at the subgenus level. An alternative approach was suggested by combining plastid gene sequences with nuclear DNA sequences, morphology, and biogeography. This supported Manning's clade C within which Ornithogalum was contained, but the very large subgenus Ornithogalum was noted to still be heterogeneous, which they had managed by treating it as seven sections. This study suggested reversing the sensu lato (lumping) approach of Manning et al., reverting to separate genera (splitting), thus resurrecting Galtonia. The sensu stricto classification of reduces the number of species to 50 as originally