Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Plants flowering to 4 dm high.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Rosulate, spreading. Blades ovate, ligulate, acute, 30–40 cm. Apex acute. Surfaces glabrous. Margins entire. Sheaths pale or darkened toward base. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences: scape central, erect, shorter than leaves; bracts imbricate, erect; inflorescences densely many–flowered, erect, simple, cylindric, to 15 cm; floral bracts imbricate, most proximal bracts (fertile) pale green, striped dark green or reddish, distal bracts (mostly sterile) rose, salmon or nearly white [red or orange in tropical america], ovate, to 2.5 cm, acute. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Sepals basally connate, green, symmetric, 1.4–1.6 cm. Petals very slightly spreading, adherent for most of length, white, without petal appendages, 2.2–2.5 cm, apex obtuse. Stamens 6, in 2 series of 3; stamens included; filaments subadnate to petals. Ovary superior; stigma included, simple–erect.

Fruit: Fruit 2–3 cm. Seeds with basal; usually tan-brown plumose appendage.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: