Plant short caulescent (sometimes with longer dead part), 12-18 cm tall, with many leaves, cinereous-green and often tinged with purple. Leaves somewhat fleshy, flexible, 7-15 cm long, shorter than to exceeding the inflorescence, densely appressed-lepidote; sheaths very small and inconspicuous, wider than the blade, with very broad membranaceous margins, soon glabrous toward the base; blades arching and often secund, very narrowly triangular, 7-15 x 0.6-1.2 cm, filiform-attenuate. Inflorescence simple, 8-14 cm long, mostly pendulous or erect; scape mostly decurved, often flaccid, 4-8.5 cm long, ca. 2 mm in diam., glabrous, often concealed by bracts and leaves; scape bracts erect, imbricate, the lower ones foliaceous, the upper ones more elliptic with linear blades, mostly exceeding the scape or inflorescence by the blade, densely lepidote except for the base; spike ovoid or slenderly ellipsoid, 3-6 cm long, 1.5-2.5 cm in diam., obtuse or emarginate, densely and polystichously 8-25-flowered or sublax at the base, with a few sterile bracts at the apex; rachis sometimes partly exposed by the spreading bracts at the base, nearly straight, angled, glabrous; floral bracts suberect to spreading, loosely sheathing the flowers, the upper ones often imbricate, membranaceous, with veined surface when dry, elliptic, 0.9-1.8 cm long, becoming smaller toward the apex, 3-many times as long as the internodes, the lower ones filiform-laminate, the upper ones more apiculate or subacute, much exceeding the sepals, much inflated-convex, ecarinate, mostly glabrous except for the apex, but sometimes appressed-lepidote throughout, pale lustrous-green to bright rose-red. Flowers (sub-)spreading, free of the bracts, narrowly funnelform, sessile; receptacle rounded-obconic, ca. 1.5 mm long, angled; sepals membranaceous, with faintly veined surface (only when dry), oblong, ca 1 cm long, obtuse and obscurely apiculate, or subacute, evenly connate for ca. 1.5 mm, posterior ones with a thickened midvein (bluntly angled), glabrous on both sides; petals ligulate, 1.5-2 cm long, divergent at the apex, obtuse to broadly rounded, blue or purple; stamens all equal in length, deeply included, exceeding the pistil by most part of the anthers, filaments more or less plicate in the middle, membranaceous-ligulate, anthers basifixed, 1.5-3 mm long; ovary suborbicular ca. 2.5 mm long, much contracted into the slender style, stigmas linear. Capsules slenderly cylindric, 3-4 cm long, abruptly rounded and short-beaked.
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