Dilatris ixioides Lam.

Evergreen perennial, 300-600 mm high. Rootstock a short woody rhizome with bright red flesh. Leaves several, distichous, unifacial, linear, 100-200(-300) x (1.5-)2-4 mm, leathery, scarcely clasping below, glabrous, flushed red basally. Stem erect, dull greyish, whitish lanate with crisped, eglandular hairs 0.5-1.5 mm long, ± glabrescent below; cauline bracts 2 to 4, scattered, upper reduced and dry-cartilaginous, lanate with crisped hairs 0.5-1.0 mm long, lower sublabrous except along margins, sparsely gland-dotted. Inflorescence a dense, subumbellate or rarely ovoid-paniculate thyrse, branches densely whitish villous with shaggy hairs 1-2(-3) mm long. Flowers numerous, weakly cupped, mauve, erect or ascending in bud and at anthesis, enantiostylous; perianth actinomorphic, tepals spreading basally then suberect, persistent, outer ovate to suborbicular, 7-10 x 4-6 mm, inner narrower, elliptic to ovate, 7-10 x 3-4 mm, thinly villous on outer surface but inner series mostly along midline, with 2 or 3 gland-dots apically, persistent. Stamens three, dimorphic, well exserted; filaments unequal, subulate-filiform, adaxial erect, 7-10 mm long with larger yellow or orange anther 2.5-4.0 mm long, abaxial spreading, 12-16 mm long with smaller reddish anthers ±1 mm long. Ovary subglobose, ±3 mm long, densely villous with spreading hairs 2-3 mm long; style filiform, ultimately 11-16 mm long, flexed sideways (left or right in any one flower). Capsule 3-locular, ovoid-subglobose, septifragal, ±5 mm long, villous. Seeds solitary in each locule, discoid and shield-shaped, marginally winged, 4.5 mm diam.