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Description:
Plants mostly 150–300 mm high, excluding leaf. Corm 10–20 mm diam.; tunics of medium to coarse, dark brown fibres. Stem usually with 3–6 branches held close to main axis on short stalks or ± sessile, sheathing leaves 30–60 mm long, dry, papery, brown, often lacerated. Foliage leaf solitary, usually absent or emergent at flowering, basal, ultimately up to 500 mm long or longer, terete, ribbed, ± 1.5 mm diam., becoming dry and broken before flowering. Rhipidial spathes dry, papery, rarely green near base, apices speckled darker brown, sometimes lacerate, attenuate; inner 25–40 mm long; outer ± 2/3 as long. Flowers fugaceous, pale blue-mauve, limbs of all tepals with yellow to orange nectar guides at bases; outer tepals obovate to lanceolate, 20–24 × 5–8 mm, claws slightly shorter than limbs, ascending, narrow; inner tepals 16–18 × ± 7 mm, lanceolate. Filaments 3–4 mm long united in lower 1/3; anthers ± 5 mm long, yellow. Ovary narrowly ellipsoid, ± 4.5 mm long; style branches 7–8 mm long, crests vestigial, shorter than stigma lobes. Capsules ± club-shaped, ± 10 mm long Seeds angular. Chromosome number 2n = 12. Flowering time: August to September (in November in tropical Africa).
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