Plants up to 25 cm high, rarely up to 60 cm. Roots tuberous short, about 4-8, not fused, spreading, with some straggling rootlets, sometimes covered with old skin flakes. Squamae surrounding the shoot short, membranous, dirty white. Leaves variable, 5-12 per shoot, straight or wavy, filiform, 7-30 cm long, about 1 mm in diam. (seldom flat and up to 5 mm wide), wiry, bright green, glossy, striate, with a minute rough pubescence or glabrous, sometimes with some white bristles near the base on the lower surface. Inflorescence an ascending panicle with 2 to many branches, as long as the leaves or overtopping them; flowers fairly close together, more lax in the taller forms; peduncles slender, straight, minutely scabrid or glabrous; bracts small, deltoid, cuspidate or aristate; pedicels short, erect, up to 8 mm in fruit, buds sessile. Flowers with a white, dark-keeled perianth, maculate with yellow spots, segments 1 cm long; filaments dimorphous, outer stamens scabrid, inner forming a tube, conspicuously muricated above, flattened and fringed below; ovary with 6-10 ovules per cell. Capsule globose, 5 mm in diam., glabrous, touching rhachis or ascending. Seeds black.
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Rhizomatous perennial, up to 300 mm tall, roots few, thick and compact. Leaves few to many, linear, often undulate, usually hairy. Flowers white, spotted at base, nodding, in a panicle, scape slender and pubescent below. Capsule globose, ± 4 mm diam., on short, erect pedicels.
Rhizomatous perennial to 30 cm, roots few, thickened. Leaves few to many, linear, often undulate, usually hairy. Flowers in a branched raceme, nodding, white, base of peduncle pubescent. Fruits on short, erect pedicels.
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