Pauridia alba (Thunb.) Snijman & Kocyan

Plants 3-19 cm tall. Corm depressed-globose, 10-20 mm diam., almost naked basally, otherwise covered with dark brown, leathery tunics, usually splitting into fibres, old corms persisting more or less laterally; fibres nearly unbranched, brown, fine, extended into a loose neck; roots fleshy, arising near corm base; slender runners occasionally present. Cataphylls up to 35 mm long, thin-textured, pinkish green, oblique distally, apex obtuse. Leaves up to 5, often immature at early flowering, sheathing proximally, erect, linear, up to 200 x 3 mm, hemiterete to bluntly trigonous in cross section, occasionally with a few minute teeth distally, apex acute; mesophyll spongy, mostly aerenchymatous. Inflorescences 1 or 2(-5) in flower at a time, (1)2-flowered, mostly longer than leaves; scape hidden in fibrous neck or shortly exserted, up to 40 x 1.5 mm, compressed adaxially, green to reddish; bracts 2, rarely only 1 evident, suberect to spreading, clasping pedicels at base, narrowly lanceolate, canaliculate, 15-35 x 1-4 mm, green to pink, edges membranous, apex acute, rarely with a few membranous teeth. Flowers pedicellate, rotate, white, rarely cream with yellow centre or plain yellow, backed with pale pink and streaked dark pink on outer tepals, often faintly sweet-scented; pedicels erect at anthesis, descending later, 12-45(-75) mm long, reddish; tepals arising from a long, slender, ovary beak, oblong-lanceolate, 7-13(-18) mm long, outer 3.5-6.0 mm wide, mucronate, inner 2.5-5.0 mm wide. Stamens 6, biseriate, more or less spreading, yellow; filaments inserted on ovary beak close to tepals, outer 1.5-3.0 mm long, inner 3.0-3.5 mm long, both whorls shorter than anthers; anthers narrowly oblong, latrorse, 3-5 mm long, basal lobes up to 0.7 mm long, sometimes diverging, apex emarginate; pollen yellow. Ovary subcylindrical, 5-15(-20) x 5-15(-20) mm, 3-locular, often incompletely so after anthesis, reddish or green with a few longitudinal red stripes, ovary beak slender, 2.0-8.0(-19) mm long; style 0.5-2.5 mm long; stigma branches erect, oblong, 2.5-5.5(-6.0) mm long, often with short, descending lobes at base, shorter than to equalling stamens, yellow, densely papillose. Capsules somewhat procumbent, narrowly fusiform to subcylindrical, 8-15 x ca. 2 mm, beaked for up to 8.0(-19.0) mm, walls splitting open lengthwise close to septa. Seeds ovoid, 0.5 x 0.4 mm, shiny black; testa cells conspicuously colliculate, in ca. 32 longitudinal rows, each conical projection on outer periclinal cell wall surrounded by a broad, flat, isodiametric rim. Flowering period: late April-June.