Chamarea snijmaniae B.L.Burtt

Herb, leafless at flowering, crown with tuft of soft fibrous leaf-bases; rootstock of 1-2 tubers, up to 9 cm long and 2 cm diam. on mature leafy plants. Leaves all radical, beginning to appear as fruit ripens (mid-May), mature leaves present mid-August; mature leaves with petiole (incl. sheath) 5-6 cm long, the sheathing part c.3.5-4 cm yellowish; lamina ternate, c.7-10 cm long and wide, the segments bipinnate, pinnae and pinnules stalked, ultimate segments very sharply toothed the teeth more or less pungent with thickened midrib. Flowering, stem leafless; leaves reduced to 3 mm long scales, the lower ones with suppressed buds, the upper sometimes subtending branches; umbels terminal on main shoot or lateral branches. Involucre of c.5 small pointed bracts 2 mm long; bracts of involucel similar. Umbels with 3-5 rays on unequal peduncles up to c.4 cm long, sometimes with a few solitary flowers at base of umbel (on one stem the whole compound umbel replaced by a simple umbel of c.30 flowers on pedicels c. 1 cm long); umbellules normally with c.6 flowers on pedicels 5 mm long, Sepals very small, semilunar. Petals 1.25 mm long (excluding the incurved acute tip), 1.25 mm broad. Filaments 1.5 mm subulate at lip. Anther 1 x 0.75 mm. Stytopodium 0.75 mm in young fruit with style 0.75 mm, deflexed (in male flower shallowly domed with very short rudimentary style). Fruit 3 x 2 mm, very slightly cordate at base, distinctly narrower towards top; mericarps apparently homomorphic, the commissure bivittate, valleculae univittate.