Erect, caulescent, often tufted, entirely glabrous, 15-25 cm high. Bulbs lanceolate in outline, often congested, up to 4 cm long: tunics lanceolate or ligulate, with long attenuate acute tips, clothed with retrorse hairs, the outer splitting and twisted, forming a loose somewhat fibrous coating. Rhizome 10-15 cm long. Stem subligneous, sometimes sparsely ranched, with scales or abortive subfascicled leaves towards the base, densely leafy above. Leaves subsessile, imbricate, reflexed: petioles squamiform, 2 mm long: leaflets 3, sessile, linear, involute or conduplicate, falcate, emarginate, 4-7 mm long, 0.6-1 mm broad, sprinkled with small pellucid striae which turn black in drying. Peduncles 1-fld., numerous, subequal, ascending, slender, axillary on the upper part of the stem, 4 cm long, reddish-brown, with 2 alternate or sub-opposite linear-lanceolate bracts a little below the calyx. Sepals broadly lanceolate, 5 mm long, longitudinally striate with pellucid (or when dried) black lines. Corolla 1.5-1.7 cm long, white, with a funnel-shaped yellow tube: petals narrow-cuneate, longitudinally concave, slightly truncate at the apex, 4-4.5 mm broad, red-margined beneath. Filaments, the shorter 1.5-3 mm, the longer 3-6 mm long, minutely and sparsely glandular-pilose, edentate. Ovary up to 2 mm long, callose to the base between the angles, glandular-pilose on the upper half, the chambers 4-6-ovuled: styles glandular-pilose. Capsule oblong, about 8 mm long. Seeds without endosperm.
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