Perennial herb, squamate, all parts glabrous; rootstock slender, bearing one or few erect flowering stems 30-35 cm tall with sympodial branching that occurs mostly at the base of inflorescences, branches erect, terete or shallowly ribbed.Leaves all reduced to minute scales, the lower ones 0.5-1.0 x 0.8-1.7 mm, broadly triangular, acute, with darkened tips, erect and more or less appressed to the stem, increasing in size upwards and transitioning into bracts, 1.1-1.9 x 0.8-1.1 mm, ovate-triangular to ovate, acute to acuminate, with entire margins, incurved to naviculate but lacking a marked midrib and bearing in their axils undeveloped buds, progressively more crowded towards the base of the inflorescence, greenish to straw-coloured. Inflorescences terminal (on long and short shoots), oblong, spikes 10.5 x 18.5 mm, bearing (15-)24-50 crowded flowers, ending in a group of about 7-14 sterile bracts. Flowers ca. 2.0 mm long, solitary and sessile in the axil of each bract or with a short(up to 0.8 mm long) pedicel. Flower bracts 1.5-2.2 x 1.0-1.4 mm, similar in shape to the bracts at the base of the inflorescence; bracteoles 2, similar to bracts but smaller. Corolla greenish outside, whitish inside; external glands between the corolla lobes inconspicuous, triangular-ovate, pale orange in colour; hypanthium shallow, 0.2 mm long, internal surface glandular; corolla tube ca. 0.4 mm long; corolla lobes 0.7-0.8 x0.6-0.7 mm, ovate or ovate-triangular, ± obtuse to slightly hooded and with inflexed tips on fruit, erect, margins entire, lacking hairs inside but with a thick, irregular, fleshy and somewhat papillose tissue. Staminal filaments inserted at junction of hypanthiumand corolla tube, very short and inconspicuous, stamen not reaching the corolla lobe sinuses, anthers rounded ca. 0.3 mm in diameter, attached to the corolla tube by a small tuft of hairs. Style very short (ca. 0.1 mm) or lacking, thus stigma sessile, lobes not apparent, reaching the base of the anthers. Placenta twisted, ovules 3. Fruits ca. 3. long, ovary portion subglobose, 1.5-2.1 x 1.6-2.0 mm, greenish, with slightly marked ribs but reticulations strongly raised, crowned with the 1.0 mm long corolla remnant, pedicel not enlarging into an elaiosome.
Home