Perennial herb with a long thick fleshy taproot; leaves and stems glabrous to silky-haired or with very short stiff spreading hairs. Leaves basal, erect to arcuate-ascending, linear to linear-lanceolate, mostly 7–20 cm long, 0.2–0.8(–1.4) cm ide, 3-veined, thick and brittle, margin entire or with a few obtuse teeth with tufts of fine hairs; with red-brown or golden-brown hairs in the leaf axil. Scapes about as long as leaves, pubescent to silky-haired; spike mostly 4–12 cm long in flower and up to 20 cm long in fruit, becoming lax in fruit. Bracts ovate, (1.5–)2–4.5 mm long, ciliate at the margin, with a glabrous fleshy keel 1/3 to 1/2 of the width. Sepals elliptic, 2.8–3.5 mm long; keel glabrous or with a few silky hairs, a third the breadth of the sepal. Corolla lobes ovate, 1.4–2.3 mm long. Stamens: anthers 2–2.5 mm long. Ovary bilocular, one loculus with 2 ovules, the other with 3, the uppermost ovule separated by a swelling of the placenta. Capsule ellipsoidal, 2.8–4(–5) mm long, the apex acute or with a minute mucro. Seeds1–5, pale brown, the lower 4 elliptic, 2.2 mm long, the upper one smaller.
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