Perennial, all parts sprinkled with orange-red pigment granules. Leaves few (up to 6) loosely associated in a rosette and each developing a conspicuous stalk (petiolode) at flowering, up to 300 x 130 mm, thick-textured, margin coarsely crenate, base rather abruptly narrowed, upper surface grey-green, densely appressed-pubescent, lower surface villous with delicate glandular and eglandular hairs, veins and petiolode (stalk) villous with white, downward-pointing hairs. Inflorescences from apex of stalk and base of midrib, c. 30-flowered, few flowers open together. Peduncles stout, up to 150 mm long; pedicels c. 13 mm long, both villous with white, downward-pointing hairs. Bracts lanceolate, up to 8 x 2 mm. Calyx divided to base into 5 linear segments, c. 5 mm long, pilose. Corolla c.17 mm long, densely glandular and sparsely pilose outside, glandular inside with a few long, jointed hairs on roof in mouth, unicellular, obtuse hairs on keels; tube very bulbous at base, narrowing towards the middle and strongly curved downwards then projected forwards and becoming ventricose below the mouth, c. 8 mm long, 3 mm across mouth, deep reddish-violet inside and out, floor of tube bisected by a double keel ex-tending nearly to the margins of the median lobe; limb very oblique, upper lip of 2 orbicular lobes, 3 x 3 mm, pale violet, strongly reflexed; lower lip c. 9 mm long, lobes orbicular, c. 5 x 5 mm, pale violet. Stamens arising in upper third of corolla tube, filaments c. 2 mm long, white, bent and swollen below the anthers; anther lobes c. 1 mm long. Ovary c. long, pilose with spreading eglandular hairs; style 5-6 mm long, dorsoventrally compressed, sometimes strongly curved like a shepherd’s crook; stigma stomatomorphic. Capsule 6-14(10 ± 2) mm long, 2 mm diam., with a prominent apiculus. Seeds 0.4-0.5 mm long, reticulate.
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