Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Large acaulescent perennial herbs from stout rhizomes; plants to 5–6 m tall.

Stems:

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, equitant, crowded in a distichous fans, with tough longitudinal bast fibers. Blades sword–shaped, strongly keeled, 100–300 cm long, 5–12 cm wide. Apex usually splitting. Base sessile. Surfaces bright orange toward base; blades stiff, erect, at least in lower part. Margins entire. Veins parallel. Sessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in large, terminal, elongate, paniculate inflorescences 4–5 m long, peduncles dark brown, 2–3 cm in diameter, glabrous; branches with flowers arising from alternate bracts, peduncles with progressively smaller bracts, pedicels articulate just below the flower. Flowers bisexual (perfect), zygomorphic. Tepals 6, subequal, erect, forming a tube, but connate only at base, persistent; Tepals dull red, 2.5–5 cm long. Stamens 6, exserted; filaments slightly flattened, inner ones slightly longer. Ovary superior, elongate, 3-celled; ovules numerous per cell; style terete (cylindrical); stigma small, narrow.

Fruit: Capsules dark brown with age; erect; 3–angled; 5–10 cm long; usually falcate; abruptly constricted at apex; not twisted. Seeds numerous; elliptic 9–10 mm long; somewhat twisted.

Ploidy: 2n = 32

Habitat: Terrestrial open habitat.

Elevation Range: 1000–1200 m