Dwarf plant with an early flowering shoot and a later developing vegetative shoot. Corm subglobose, 0.5-1.2 cm in diam., with fairly thin brown tunics over a firm white body, produced into a short and loose, sometimes indistinct neck or only a submembranous sheath. Flowering stem dwarf, above ground1.5-6 cm high (up to 10 cm in the fruiting stage). Leaves cauline, only one green during anthesis, another ± withered near the stem base. Basal leaf sheath-like, submembranous, brownish, 1-3 cm long, apically dilated and with a withered usually short remnant of lamina; the vaginate base distinctly set off from the slender stem. Green cauline leaf 3-8 cm long, inserted about the middle of the stem, with a pale submembranous veined sheath basally distinctly set off from the stem; lamina erecto-patent or arcuate, long-acuminate, subterete or complanate with connate margins, broader and conduplicate above the vaginate base. Hysteranthous vegetative shoot inconspicuous at anthesis, visible as a terete filiform sheath a few cm high, later developing 1 or 2 elongate leaves from a basal sheath; sheath 5-10 cm long, submembranous, apically truncate and often mucronate; leaves linear-filiform, flat or seemingly subterete with involute margins, up to 25 cm long, 1-5 mm wide. Spike 1-3 cm long, 1-8-flowered, fairly dense, the flowers spaced 2-7 mm apart. Perianth campanulate with erecto-patent or ± spreading segments, 7-15 mm long, white; perianth tube broadly cylindric or somewhat widening above, 2.5-7.5 mm long, 1.5-4 mm broad, pale and submembranous, closely 3-veined in the connate portion of each tepal; free segments narrowly oblong-lanceolate, 4-8 mm long, 1-1.5 mm wide, 3-7(-9)-veined, with a transversely ovate-oblong or thickly reniform purple blotch below the middle. Nectary a broadly grooved patch1-2 mm long at the base of the free segment (below the blotch), with elevated margins. Filaments inserted in the nectary pocket, 3-4 mm long, white, slender. Anthers oblong, 1-1.5 mm long, 0.6-0.9 mm wide, red, turning brown at the time of dehiscence. Pistil oblong, 5-8 mm long incl. styles, dull reddish green; free styles 3.5-6 mm long, ± erect, subulate-filiform, slender,white, with small capitate stigmas. Capsule ovoid-ellipsoid, 8-13 mm long incl. styles, 4-6 mm wide; styles erect, 4-6.5 mm long. Seeds subglobose or somewhat compressed, c. 2 mm long and 1.5-2 mm wide, brown, somewhat reticulate, with a short obtuse darker brown beak at one end.
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