Erect, caulescent, up to 10 cm high, entirely glabrous except for the ciliate sepals. Bulbs lanceolate in outline, often congested, 4-5 cm long: tunics loose, lanceolate or linear-lanceolate, sharply acute, brown, clothed with retrorse brown hairs, the inner paler, shining. Rhizome up to 10 cm long, pilose. Stem up to 7 cm long, sometimes branching, the greater part densely leafy up to the apex, but with a few more or less striate scales towards the base. Leaves numerous, densely imbricate, recurved: petioles subsquamiform, 1.5-2.5 mm long, with 2 striae near the margins: leaflets 3, sessile, narrow-linear, falcate-conduplicate, minutely emarginate, 3-8 mm long, sprinkled with small pellucid streaks which turn black in drying. Peduncles rather numerous, 1-fld.,in the axils of the lower leaves, 2.5-7.5 cm long, reddish, with 2 alternate or sub-opposite linear striate bracts a little below the calyx. Sepals broadly lanceolate, 4-5 mm long, rarely minutely ciliate, striate with pellucid (or when dried) black lines. Corolla up to 2 cm long, bright reddish-purple, with a funnel-shaped yellow tube: laminae of the petals sub-orbicular, slightly truncate at the apex, linear-striate near the outer margin, rather longer than the tapering claw. Filaments, the shorter2-2.5 mm, the longer 3-4 mm long, very sparsely glandular-pilose, slightly gibbose. Ovary glabrous or sparsely pubescent towards the apex, with numerous calli, the chambers 2-3-ovuled: styles sparsely pubescent below, glandular above. Seeds without endosperm.
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