This is a perennial geophytic herb with a deep-seated, cylindrical and elongated tuber. Plants are usually unbranched. Aerial parts are deciduous, all parts with milky latex. Stems are 320 - 610 mm tall, with long interwoven woolly hairs (lanate).

Leaves are also lanate, crowded and irregularly inserted below, becoming whorled in the section with flowers; blade 24 - 52 × 3 - 6 mm, sword-shaped with a sharp tip, margins strongly rolled with a ±2 mm long pedicel.

Flowers are grey-green paler on outside, inside darker with brown to maroon blotches in longitudinal stripes sometimes alternating with some white stripes, in sessile groups of 3 - 4 at the nodes where they are borne. Corolla more than 20 mm in diameter, lobes flat and spreading, with a hairy mix of sharp hyaline and brown hairs; oval to lance-shaped, pale green outside and darker green inside with maroon to brown blotches or longitudinal striations or sometimes homogeneously green. Corona fleshy with a complex structure, usually white with minute purple spots. Pollen aggregated in a pollinarium with winged clip (corpuscle). Flowering time is from November to January (mainly in December and January).

Fruit to 80 × 10mm, covered with bristles and dense white indumentum.