Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial herbs, solitary or in small clumps, perennating by pale, fleshy, lateral buds.

Stems: Rhizomes.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, equitant. Blades linear, fleshy, twisted and flexuous, 20–40(–50) cm long, 5–10 mm wide. Apex acuminate. Base dilated near base. Surfaces glabrous. Margins minutely scabrous or smooth. Veins parallel. Sheathing, sheaths open. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers on terminal scapes 5–11 dm long, twisted and flexuous, ribs smooth, spikes ellipsoid to ovoid or oblong, 15–30(–40) mm long, 8–15 mm in diameter, bracts subtending each flower broadly elliptic–obovate, 5–7 mm long. Flowers odorless and without nectar, pollinated by bees, bisexual (perfect). Calyx zygomorphic; sepals unequal, the middle one larger, hood-like, caducous, the lateral ones boat-shaped to spatulate, margins often ciliate; lateral sepals 5–6 mm long, keel narrow, entire below, fimbriate above middle. Corolla of 3 petals, yellow or white, opening in the afternoon, broadly obovate, ca. 5 mm long. Stamens 3(6), opposite the petals; filaments adnate to petals; anthers opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 3-carpellate; ovules orthotropous. style terminal, unlobed or 3-lobed.

Fruit: Capsules 3-valved; loculicidal. Seeds ellipsoid; translucent; 0.5–0.6 mm long; with 10–12 irregular longitudinal lines and scattered; less conspicuous; vertical lines.

Ploidy: 2n = 18

Habitat: Naturalized in wet muddy areas and on lava.

Elevation Range: ca. 500 m.