Rhizome sometimes with a metallic blue-gray color, 0.5-1 cm in diam., irregularly thickened. Root system sometimes with many finely branched upright roots. Leaves green to brown, very variable, narrowly linear to lanceolate, 10-70 × 0.2-4 cm, smooth to undulate to bullate, margin entire to finely, irregularly denticulate; broader leaf blades mostly with conspicuous lateral veins. Generally, two ecological leaf forms occur: 1) plants that grow submerged for most of year, thus developing long flaccid-lax submerged leaves (sometimes also developing shorter, stiffer emergent leaves); 2) plants that develop short terete leaves during rainy season and, when water level decreases, form normal emergent leaves at anthesis. Spathe outside greenish to brownish, 10-40(-60) cm; kettle 1-2.5 cm, inside somewhat constricted below male flowers, inside ± reddish (especially distally) and with alveolae (depressions in wall) in distal part; flap closing kettle sometimes ± purple spotted; tube slightly to somewhat twisted, 5-30(-45) cm; limb ± spirally twisted, yellowish to grayish, with short to long, purple to reddish markings, sometimes markings almost completely covering surface, or few and faint, or absent, (1.5-)3-8(-12) cm; collar not present. Spadix: female flowers 4-6, with horizontal to vertical, round to ovoid stigmas; olfactory bodies ± irregularly lobed with protruding cells; male flowers 90-130, thecae rough from protruding cells. Fruit splitting in a septicidal/septifragal-ceratium-like way, greenish to purplish, narrowly globose, 1-1.5 cm, smooth. Seeds brownish, 5-8 mm, rugose; endosperm present; embryo cone-shaped with an undifferentiated plumule. 2n = 36, 54.
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