Catopsis berteroniana
Content
Description
Plant flowering up to 1 m long, with a broadly subfunnelform, 20-45 cm tall rosette of about 15bright yellow-green leaves. Leaves thin (chartaceous when dry), with large but indistinct sheaths (about half as long as the total leaf), ovate-lanceolate, 18-42 x 3.5-6 cm, about half as long as the scape or less, the sheathing part with narrowmembranaceous margins, triangular-acute or slightly acuminate, densely and minutely lepidote in lower part, soon less lepidote to subglabrous, yellow-green and often white-cretaceous. Inflorescence bipinnate of 1-6 laxly and polystichously arranged spikes, or rarely simple; scape erect, 45-80 cm long, 3-5 mm in diam., glabrous, in lower part densely covered by its bracts, but in upper part often partly exposed; scape bracts erect, the lower ones densely imbricate and foliaceous, the upper ones ovate, often remote, more or less loosely sheathing, chartaceous, caudate to acuminate, sparsely and minutely lepidote toward the apex, green; axis wholly exposed, flexuous, subterete, glabrous; primary bracts as the upper scape bracts, much shorter than and loosely sheathing the peduncle; peduncle suberect or spreading, 1.7-3.4 cm long, glabrous, naked; spikes elongate, 3-11 cm long, 1-1.4 cm in diam. at anthesis, laxly and polystichously (3-)7-16-flowered, with a few densely imbricate and reduced sterile bracts at the apex, yellowish green; rachis wholly exposed, slightly flexuous, angled, glabrous; floral bracts clasping the flowers, coriaceous, with veined surface when dry, broadly ovate, 0.6-0.8 cm long, about as long as the internodes, much exceeded by the sepals, with membranaceous margins, broadly rounded, ecarinate, strongly curved, glabrous. Flowers suberect or spreading, remote, sessile; sepals coriaceous, with even surface, asymmetrically obovate, 0.8-1.1 cm long, apically with a broad membranaceous margin at one side, emarginate and obscurely apiculate, free, posterior ones bluntly carinate, glabrous outside, sparsely and minutely brown-lepidote at the inside; petals elliptic, ca. 1 cm long, just exceeding or equaling the sepals, with inconspicuous blade, white; stamens included, not distinctly unequal in length, exceeding the pistil (?), filaments flat, membranaceous, straight, anthers basifixed, sagittate, ca. 2 mm long, apiculate; ovary globose (?), abruptly contracted into the short style (1/3 as long as the ovary). Capsule ovoid, ca. 1.4 cm long, barely exceeding the sepals, apiculate; coma gold-cream.