Slender, erect, up to 15 cm high, entirely glabrous or sparsely pubescent, usually with a well exserted stem. Bulb lanceolate in outline or narrow-conical, often contorted: tunics lanceolate, attenuate, needle-pointed, often splitting at the base, pilose with retrorse coppery hairs. Rhizome often about 6 cm long. Stem 1-8 cm long, glabrous, densely foliaceous. Leaves more or less closely imbricate: petioles, the lower very short, squamiform, the upper terete, slender, up to 3 cm long: leaflets 3, sessile, linear, conduplicate, emarginate, usually 1-1-8 cm long, with elongate pellucid streaks which turn black in drying. Peduncles fld., often numerous, axillary, very slender, usually 5-9 cm long, with2 rather large 'pellucid-streaked alternate bracts near the calyx. Sepals lanceolate, 4-6 mm long, usually minutely ciliate, longitudinally striate with pellucid (or when dried) black lines. Corolla 1.1-1.8 cm long, yellow, or white, with a funnel-shaped yellow tube: petals cuneate, scarcely attenuate to the base, sometimes subtruncate, involutely channelled, pellucid-streaked on the outer margin. Filaments, the shorter 3-5 mm, the longer 3-5-5 mm long, minutely glandular-pilose, dentate. Ovary 2 mm long, glandular-pilose on the upper half, conspicuously callose when dried, the chambers about 7-ovuled: styles minutely glandular-pilose. Capsule somewhat longer than the sepals. Seeds without endosperm.
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