Plants usually robust, 200-500 mm tall; sterile shoots slender or robust, up to 150 mm tall, basal sheaths usually 3, often red-blotched, leaves linear-elliptic, conduplicate, 100-300 x 10-40 mm; fertile shoots: cauline leaves imbricate, basal 2 usually reduced, red-blotched, remainder lanceolate, 30-100 mm long, mostly sheathing, rarely with a large free blade. Inflorescences dense, 20-100-flowered; bracts inconspicuous, as long as the ovaries. Flowers bright red, 5-10 mm in diameter. Median sepal subrhomboid, galea narrowly oblong to lanceolate, 5-13 x 2.5-6 (-8) mm; spur pendent, slender, 3.5-6 mm long; lateral sepals suboblique, oblong-ovate, obtuse, shallowly navicular, 4.5-7 mm long. Petals bilobed, anterior lobe ovate, spreading, posterior lobe '/3 taller, oblanceolate, obliquely truncate. Lip pendent, linear, acute, 4-12 mm long. Anther 3-5 mm long; stigma c. 2 mm in diameter, equally 3-lobed.
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