Rather robust, 3-25 cm high, usually entirely glabrous, the stem not or rarely exserted. Bulb oval or ovoid, 1.5-4 cm long; outer tunics thin, soft, pale brown, or rarely splitting and forming a dense fibrous coating. Rhizome stout, usually long, with several conspicuous amplexicaul scales, often enclosed within a brown tunicaceous cortex. Leaves few or many, often spreading; petioles commonly 2-6 cm long, dilated and scale-like below the basal articulation, swollen into a small pulvinus at the apex, very rarely pilose with short patent pluricellular hairs; leaflets 2-12, sessile, often spreading palmately, linear, oblong, cuneate, cuneate-obovate or obovate, acute, obtuse or more rarely emarginate, often conduplicate-falcate, 1-5 cm long, the margins sometimes more or less cartilaginous and rarely undulate. Peduncles 1-fld., shorter or longer than the leaves, with 2 alternate linear bracts near the calyx. Sepals ovate-lanceolate, oblong or ovate-oblong, acute or obtuse, 0.4-1 cm long, often unequal in width, very rarely glandular-eiliate, usually with several indistinct orange calli near the apex. Corolla 1.4-3 cm long, yellow, white or very pale rosy-violet, with a rather broadly funnel-shaped yellow tube; laminae of the petals obovate, often purple on the outer margin beneath, rather longer than the attenuate claw. Filaments very minutely glandular-pilose, the shorter 2.5-4.5 mm, the longer 3.5-7.5 mm long, with obtuse teeth. Ovary glabrous, the chambers 2-3 ovuled; styles glandular-pilose on the upper half. Capsule subglobular. Seeds without endosperm.
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