Perennial herb, solitary, acaulescent; roots thick fleshy. Leaves rosulate, spreading, the expanded bases forming a bulb-like swelling c. 10 cm in diameter below ground-level; lamina up to 50 × 15 cm, ovate-lanceolate, slightly fleshy, bright green, longitudinally striate; margin cartilaginous, 1–2 mm wide, with whitish densely crowded teeth 1 mm long and 1–5 mm apart. Inflorescence erect to 60 cm high; peduncle with 3–4(7) obliquely spreading branches, and with a few sterile, ovate bracts below the racemes. Racemes 10–20 × 8 cm, cylindric, ± laxly flowered; bracts 8–15 × 5–8 mm, ovate-acuminate, distinctly many-nerved, pale green; pedicels c. 2 cm long, elongating to 3 cm in fruit and thickening conspicuously. Perianth pale yellow to pinkish or brownish-yellow (olive-buff in original description) with darker nerves, 35–40 mm long, 8–10 mm in diameter across the ovary, slightly constricted above the ovary then widening towards the mouth, base rounded, cylindric; outer segments free for one-third with tips very slightly spreading. Stamens and stigma scarcely exserted. Capsule stipitate for 2–4 mm, c. 3.5 × 2.5 cm, ovoid, brown. Seeds 7 × 12 mm, greyish-brown, very broadly winged.
