Description:
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An erect or ± decumbent perennial herb with many stems from a thick woody rootstock. Stems annual, reddish-brown, 8–35 cm long, longitudinally striate, leafless at the base, ± pubescent. Leaves 3.5–6 × 0.9–1.3 cm, elliptic-lanceolate to lanceolate, acute apiculate at the apex, attenuate at the base, entire on the margins, pubescent to glabrescent, midrib prominent beneath. Ocrea reddish-brown, 0.8–1.3 cm long, truncate with a fringe of brownish setae 3–7 mm long at the apex, ± pubescent. Flowers pedicellate, 2–6 in the axils of bracts, arranged in terminal and lateral spiciform racemes up to 17 cm long, pedicels 5–8 mm long, accrescent up to 12 mm and reflexed in fruit; bracts chartaceous, obliquely truncate and produced dorsally into an acute subulate seta, sometimes with a fringe of short setae Hermaphrodite flowers heterostylous; perianth white with lobes tinged pink outside; tube 1.5–2 mm long, puberulous outside; lobes 4–7 × 3 mm long, ovate-elliptic to oblong-elliptic. Male flowers not seen. Ovary 0.5–1 mm long; style connate in the lower c. 2 mm, 3-branched; style of long-styled flowers 4–6.5 mm long; style of short-styled flowers (1)1.5–2.5(3) mm. Nut reddish-brown when mature, 7–9 × 4–5 mm, ovoid-trigonous, longitudinally striate, unwrinkled or very irregularly wrinkled, puberulous. |