Perennial herb. Rhizome stout, ascending to erect, woody, covered with leaf sheaths, up to 35 by 1-1½ cm; roots coarse, shoots flat, fan-shaped. Leaves densely rosulate, ensiform, 75-150 by 3-4½ cm; sheath 20-30 cm long, inside with scanty very long thin arachnoideous hairs, linear, acute, glabrous, of firm texture, a bundle veins on each side forms a prominent costa dissolving to the apex, with short oblique transverse veins; blade monofacial arched or horizontal, with secondary upper and lower surface. Scape terminal 25-50 cm, erect, obtuse-angular, upwards covered with a dense light-grey wool, leafless in its lower half, thence carrying 5-10 reduced ensiform leaves or spathes passing into bifacial alternate bracts. Branches of 1st order of the panicle supported by a spathe, the largest 10-40 by 1½-3 cm, 2-3 lowermost with few branchlets of 2nd order 2-8 cm long. Bracts linear subulate 1-2 by ¼-½ cm, 1-3-nerved, base woolly convolute enclosing the bud. Flowers sessile, white, glabrous except the 2-2½ mm high tube. Outer tepals narrow-triangular, convolute with filiform apex, posterior one bicarinate-bicuspidate, with in-flexed margins, 9-12⅓ by 4-5 mm, anterior one 8-11 by 2½-3½ mm. Inner tepals and filament adnate to the tube, small, 1-nerved, 4-5 mm long, irregularly 3-dentate, free portion 1½-2½ by ¾-1½ mm. Free part of the stamen 3¼-3¾ mm; anther 2-2½ by 1-1½ mm. Ovary 2 by 1 mm densely grey-woolly. Style 3-sulcate, 2¾-4½ mm long, stigma small triangular. Berry white, slightly 3-sulcate, 7-8 by 6 mm, pericarp tough leathery. Seeds ∞, 2-2½ by ½ mm, cylindrical-flattened, often slightly curved, dark-brown with a transparent striate outer testa prolonged at both ends.
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