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Description:
Plants usually small, 80–120(–250) mm high. Corm 10–20 mm diam.; tunics of tough, blackish fibres often accumulating in a thick mass, usually with small cormlets around base. Stem flexuose, usually with 2–4 branches, sheathing leaves attenuate, becoming dry, brown, 15–40 mm long. Foliage leaf solitary, basal, up to 250 mm long, either linear and channelled, often slightly twisted, sometimes margins undulate to crisped, or terete, then sometimes hollow. Rhipidial spathes becoming dry and straw-coloured above, inner 24–40 mm long, outer 2/3 as long. Flowers fugaceous, blue-mauve (rarely white) with deep yellow (or yellow and blue) nectar guides at bases of limbs of inner and outer tepals, limbs ± spreading, claws ± 3 mm long, suberect, forming a shallow cup around base of filament column; tepals oblanceolate, outer 12–21 × 4–8 mm, inner tepals 11–18 × 5–6 mm. Filaments 3.5–8.0 mm long, united in slender, smooth column, free in upper 1/2 to 1/4; anthers 2–5 mm long, diverging, yellow; pollen yellow. Ovary ovoid-globose, 3–6 mm long, usually exserted; style branches narrow, ascending, 2–3 mm long, reaching to ± mid anther level, forked and stigmatic apically; crests lacking. Capsules ovoid to ± globose, 6–7 × 3–4 mm. Seeds brown, angular. Chromosome number 2n = 12, 24, 36. Flowering time: late September to November, sometimes in December; opening late afternoon, mostly after 15:30, fading in early evening.
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