Plant succulent, with stem short or up to 20 cm long. Leaves 16-20. densely rosulate. 20-25 cm long, 5-6 cm broad, lanceolate-attenuate, erectly spreading, terminating with a short pungent horny spine; upper surface cress-green, slightly canaliculate, obscurely lineate, with numerous small white spots, scattered or more or less arranged in a series of wavy interrupted transverse bands, the narrowly elliptic double spots somewhat 'H' shaped; lower surface convex, duller green, with numerous deeper green minute spots or specks, with obscure rather wavy irregular transverse dull whitish bands, and with a few short pale brown teeth in the median line near apex; margins armed with deltoid pungent horny pale brown teeth, the teeth slightly deflexed, about 3 mm long and 10-15 mm distant, more isolated and with rounded white interspaces near base, browner and more sinuate-dentate upwards. Inflorescence about 66 cm high, branched from about the middle, with about 7 arcuate-erect branches, the 1-3 lowest with 2-3 branchlets and subtended at base by sub-scarious acuminate bracts about 5 cm long, 15 mm broad, the bracts many-nerved, armed with a few short brown marginal teeth in upper third, the apex pungent. Peduncle semi-terete, about 13 mm diam., brown, lightly covered with a greyish powdery substance. Racemes broadly cylindric, slightly acuminate, sub-laxly 30-40-flowered, the terminal slightly higher than the lateral, about 20 cm long, 8 cm broad, the lateral shorter and fewer flowered, the youngest buds greenish tipped, obliquely spreading, older buds more horizontally disposed with the open scarlet flowers cernuous to sub-pendulous. Bracts 10-15 mm, long, ovate-acuminate, thin sub-scarious, about 9-nerved, amplexicaul at base, spreading to recurved above. Pedicels up to 18 mm long in the terminal raceme, slightly shorter in the lateral. Perianth scarlet, paler at mouth, 34 mm long, sub-globosely inflated at base (9 mm diam.), constricted above the ovary to 5 mm, thence decurved and enlarging towards the throat, slightly compressed laterally; outer segments free for 9 mm with pale yellowish 1 mm wide marginal border, and with sub-acute very slightly spreading apices; inner segments with slightly broader dull pale-yellowish border, and with more obtuse more spreading apices. Filaments pale lemon, much flattened, the 3 inner narrower and lengthening in advance of the 3 outer. Anthers scarcely exserted. Style slightly yellower than the filaments, with the stigma scarcely exserted. Ovary green, 8 mm long, 3 mm diam. at base, slightly tapering into the style, finely 6-grooved. The leaf sap dries purple.
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