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Male flowers: pedicels up to 2 mm long; calyx 3 mm long, green, lobes c. 1 × 1 mm, triangular-ovate, obtuse, entire, glabrous, reddish; petals 5 × 1.5 mm, spathulate-oblanceolate, rounded, glabrous without, appressed-pubescent within below, pale cream-coloured or whitish; disk glands 5, free, 0.5 mm long, obcordate, compressed, emarginate; stamens 8, ± free, 3–4 mm long, filaments glabrous, anthers 1.5 mm long, yellow.
An erect, single-stemmed pubescent herb up to c. 20 cm high, though commonly much less, arising from a globose tuber; tuber verrucose, up to 6 cm in diameter (shrinking to c. 4 cm when dried) lying just below, or down to 8 cm below, ground level, with a reddish sap.
Leaf blades 0.5–3.5 × 0.1–0.5 cm, linear-lanceolate or linear-setaceous, the lower ones scale like, acute, entire, undulate, membranaceous, penninerved, sparingly pubescent to subglabrous on both surfaces, somewhat glaucous; the lateral nerves in up to 12 pairs.
Seeds 6.5–7 × 4.5 × 3.5 mm, ellipsoid-subcylindric, smooth, grey, mottled brown; caruncle 1 × 2.5 mm, depressed-hemispherical, 2-lobed, brownish, edged with cream-buff.
Inflorescences terminal or terminating short axillary shoots; bracts resembling the smaller foliage leaves, reddish.
Fruit 8–10 × 9–10 mm, 3-lobed to subglobose, smooth, subglabrous or pubescent, green.
Stems whitish-purple below, greenish-purple above, with a milky latex.
Stipules c. 0.5 mm long, subulate-filiform, or absent.
Petioles up to 1 mm long, or leaves subsessile.
