Albuca bakeri

Description. Evergreen or deciduous bulbous plants. Bulb mostly solitary, occasionally growing in small clumps, hypogeal, ovoid to spherical, 3.2 - 7 x 2.5 - 6.5 cm, with soft outer tunics that are pale and fleshy, ending in a long epigeal neck, up to 10 x 2 cm, covered with whitish open and sheathing membranous cataphylls bearing transversal sinuous ridges with their lower side pale to dark brown coloured, giving a zebra banding horizontal pattern; tunics fleshy, whitish, all reaching the top of the bulb, concentrically arranged. Roots fleshy, narrow, white, up to 90 x 2 mm. Leaves 2 - 6, disposed in an apical rosette, linear-lanceolate to oblong, 9 - 40 x 0.4 - 1.3 cm, erect when young and later curving downwards, infolded, canaliculate, persistent or usually deciduous, pale bright green to glaucous, glabrous, usually minutely papillate on nerves and margins, exceptionally with long papillate margins. Inflorescence an erect raceme or subcorymb, 3 - 15 cm long; peduncle 9 - 22 cm long; pedicels helicoidally disposed, 3 - 7.5 cm long, longer at the base, up to 0.2 - 0.7 cm long near top, erect-patent; bracts ovate-lanceolate to triangular, long acuminate, 9 - 27 x 4 - 10 mm, papery white with brownish separated nerves that converge at the tips, much shorter than pedicels at least in the lower part of the inflorescence. Flowers erect; tepals white with a green median stripe 2 - 3 mm wide, sometimes with the tips yellowish; outer tepals lanceolate-oblong, 19 - 23 x 5 - 7 mm, with apex slightly cucullate; inner tepals ovate, 13 - 17 x 6 - 7 mm, with apex strongly cucullate. Stamens all six bearing fertile anthers; outer anthers 1.5 - 3 mm long, inner anthers 4 - 6 mm long; outer filaments 10 - 13.5 x 1.5 - 2 mm, linear lanceolate to narrowly oblong, not pinched down; inner filaments 10.5 - 14.5 x 2 - 3.5 mm, linear oblong, wider and pinched in the lower half. Ovary oblong to obovate, up to 6 - 7 x 2 - 3.5 mm, stipitate, with prominent paraseptal crests that are divergent in the lower part and form three prominent ridges; style subobpyramidal or clavate, trigonous, up to 7 - 11 x 3.5 - 4.5 mm, stigma yellowish green. Capsule ovate, 14 - 16 x 11 - 12 mm, trigonous to subsphaerical in section, pale-brown when mature; valves splitting in the upper quarter. Seeds flat, c. 4 - 5 x 3 - 4 mm, dark brown to black, flattened and semidiscoidal, biseriate and horizontally stacked in each locule. (Fig. 5)