Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Plants clustering, flowering to 65 cm.

Stems: Stems short.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. 20–50, many-ranked, erect to spreading, gray to gray–green, grayish–scaly; sheath dark rust colored toward base, broadly elliptic, flat, not forming pseudobulb, 3–4 cm wide. Blades narrowly triangular, tapering evenly from base to apex, stiff, leathery, channeled to involute, 25–50 × 1–2.5 cm. Apex attenuate. Margins entire. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences of 10-50 flowers, scape conspicuous, erect or ascending, 10–35 cm, 4–8 mm diam.; bracts densely imbricate, erect to spreading, like leaves but gradually smaller; sheath of bracts narrowing gradually into blade; spikes erect to spreading, densely palmate to laxly 2(–3)–pinnate, narrowly elliptic, compressed, 5–20 × 1.5–2.5 cm, apex acute; lateral branches 3–15. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Sepals with adaxial pair connate, lanceolate, to 1/2 keeled, to 4.2 cm, leathery, slightly veined, apex acute, surfaces glabrous to slightly scaly. Corolla tubular, petals erect, violet (white), ligulate, 5–6 cm. Stamens 6, in 2 series of 3; stamens exserted. Ovary superior; stigma exserted, conduplicate–spiral.

Fruit: Fruits to 4 cm. Seeds with basal; white; plumose appendage.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: