Pancratium tenuifolium Hochst.

Herb, up to 40 cm, with globose bulb, diam. up to 4 cm, narrowed into a long, cylindrical, slender neck. Leaves linear, 1-7, 0.3-1 cm broad and up to 35 cm long, developing after anthesis, finely pubescent at the base. Leaf epidermal cells of almost equal width throughout their length; stomata more or less equalling the epidermal cells in width. Peduncle lateral, 1(-2) to a bulb, 1-10 cm long at anthesis, finely pubescent (rare ly glabrous), each bearing a single flower (rarely 2), enclosed in a pale membranaceous involucrum up to 8 cm long, often bifid above. Flowers opening after sunset and fading at sunrise, perianth tube (7-)9-14(-17) cm long, slender, pale green, lobes 5-10 cm long, ca. 1 cm broad, acuminate spreading, folded backwards, white, with a darker median stripe. Corona 2-4 cm long, reaching to about 2/3 of the length of the perianth lobes with two triangular lobes between each pair of stamens. Filaments 1-1.6(-2) cm long, anthers dorsifixed, 0.5-0.8 cm long. The pollen grains are prolate and unicolpate. The length varies from 60-80 µm, and the width from 30-50 µm. The structure of the exine is semitectate and per-reticulate. The lumina are narrower towards the ends of the grain. Stigma capitate, exserted, about 1 cm shorter than the lobes, ovary sessile. Capsule spherical to cylindrical, up to 2.5 cm long, containing up to 33 seeds. Seeds glossy, black, furnished with a white appendage, globose to angular, ca. 0.4 cm in diameter. It flowers shortly after the first rain.