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Flowers pale-yellow or sometimes whitish or pink, the keels sometimes red to brown, the lower 3 tepals each with a deep-yellow mark in the upper half and this often with a greenish or brown outline; perianth tube 3.5–4.5 mm long, curved outward and emerging from between the bracts; tepals unequal, the uppermost larger than the others and hooded over the stamens, 8–10 × c. 6 mm, the upper lateral tepals directed forward, the lower 3 tepals 5–7 × 1.5 mm at the widest, much exceeding the upper when viewed in profile, joined to the upper lateral tepals for 3 mm and to themselves for c. 2 mm, closely aligned and more or less horizontal, abruptly narrowed below into claws.
Foliage leaves 2, the lower one basal and tightly sheathing the stem for most of its length, often reaching to about the top of the spike, the upper leaf inserted shortly below the spike, the apex usually shorter than but occasionally exceeding the lower leaf; blades 2–5 cm long and c. 0.5 mm wide, linear and with 2 fairly narrow grooves on each surface, the margins and midrib somewhat to heavily thickened.
Spike (2)4–9-flowered, inclined at an angle of about 30°, slightly flexuous; bracts green, sometimes flushed purple, 6–9 mm long, generally slightly more than one internode long, thus usually overlapping the base of the next bract, the inner slightly shorter than the outer.
Filaments c. 5 mm long, unilateral and arcuate, exserted c. 2.5 mm from the tube; anthers yellow, parallel, 4.5–5 mm long, shortly apiculate, reaching or barely exceeding the apices of the upper lateral tepals.
Corms 7–12 mm in diameter; tunics of fine netted fibres sometimes accumulating around the base in a weakly developed neck.
Stem erect, unbranched, sheathed for most of its length, flexed sharply outward above the sheath of the upper leaf.
Style dividing opposite the middle of the anthers, style branches c. 1 mm long, not reaching the anther apices.
Capsules 5–6 mm long, broadly obovoid.
Plants slender, 15–30(40) cm high.
