Soft plants 18-60 cm high, solitary or several together. Roots swollen, ca. 7, contracted, not fused, whitish with numerous long thin rootlets. Rhizome small, compact. Squamae membranous, whitish, 15-30 cm high, surrounding the shoot as well as the leaf-and scape-bases. Leaves 2-8, subterete to linear, 11-40 cm long, 1-7 mm broad, tapering gradually to the apex, soft, glabrous or very minutely scabrid, dark green, often mottled near the base. Inflorescence 1-5 per plant, occasionally branched but usually simple through reduction, many flowered, often shorter than the leaves, elongating and falsely secund in fruiting stage; scape usually short, glabrous, or minutely scabrid, often reddish-brown and mottled near the base, sterile bracts (vestiges of suppressed branches) present; bracts boat shaped, cuspidate, sub-amplexcaul; pedicels short in bud, elongating to 3 cm in fruit and then patent, slightly recurved. Flower with perianth rotate, white to pinkish with reddish-brown keels, immaculate, segments 1 cm long, inner ciliate at the base; stamens with white filaments, inner with longer bristles, anthers orange; ovary with 9 ovules per cell. Capsule cylindrical, ca. 8 mm long, 3 mm in diam., thin walled, apiculate. Seeds black.
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Rhizomatous perennial to 60 cm, slender, roots swollen. Leaves few, linear, often mottled near base. Flowers in a lax, usually unbranched raceme, white. Fruits on very long, spreading pedicels.
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