Home
Perennial herb, simple in reduced forms but usually with numerous divaricately branched stems arising from the base; stem and branches slender, drying dark green to blackish, glabrous or thinly pilose in the upper part, striate; rootstock a tuber, spherical to large and parsnip-shaped, up to c. 15 cm. long.
Leaves very variable, from very narrowly linear to broadly obovate, sessile, (6) 20–70 × 1–18 mm., thinly pilose to somewhat floccose-hairy or frequently glabrous or almost so often darkening on drying, the margins sometimes more or less crispate, acute to obtuse or apiculate at the apex.
Bracts very variable in size; from c. 2 mm. long, deltoid-ovate and scarcely differing from the bracteoles to broadly lanceolate, up to 7 mm. long and subequalling the perianth, white, firm, glabrous to minutely ciliate, the midrib shortly excurrent.
Inflorescence cylindrical (or occasionally capitate in small forms), 1.5–8 (10) × 1.25–1.75 cm., not involucrate, on a slender peduncle 1–15 cm. long, axis brownish or usually white-pilose.
Bracteoles deltoid-ovate, 1.5–3 mm. long, the nerve shortly to long-excurrent, glabrous or ciliate, falling with the perianth.
Stamens 4–6 mm. long; pseudostaminodes flabellate, 1–1.5 mm. long, with a long-fimbriate dorsal scale.
Ovary obpyriform, c. 1 mm. long, firm in the upper half; style slender, 3.5–4.5 mm. long.
Seeds oblong-ovoid, 2.25–2.75 mm. long, brown, shining, faintly reticulate.
Capsule oblong-ovoid with a narrower firm apex, 2.5–3 mm. long.
