Plants small, up to 30 cm high, glabrous. Roots short, hard, few, tuberous, rough in old plants where the outer skins flake off. Rhizome small. Squamae up to 3 cm long, forming a neck, outer hard, brown, inner membranous, split into shreds. Leaves1-4, filiform, 6-16 cm long, wiry, erect or curved outwards, bright green, glossy. Inflorescence a divaricate, few flowered panicle with about 3 branches; scape thin, terete, about as long as the leaves or slightly shorter; bracts minute, black or colourless, apiculate; pedicels short, thin, up to 5 mm in fruit, erect. Flowers with a white, brown keeled, maculate perianth, segments 8 mm long, spreading or somewhat recurved; filaments subequal, inner surrounding the ovary at the base; ovary with 10 ovules per cell. Capsule oblong, 5 mm long, touching rhachis. Seeds (unripe) small, with hyaline ridges.
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Rhizomatous perennial, up to 0.5 m tall, roots few, short and tuberous. Leaves up to 10, filiform, occasionally wavy, smooth or rarely sparsely hairy, surrounded at base by a hard, brown neck occasionally extended into a transversely striped sheath. Flowers white, spotted yellow at base, in a slender, widely spreading, few-branched raceme with minute bracts. Capsule ovoid, 5 mm long, held erect on pedicels < 10 mm long.
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