Authors:
Always dwarf in the wild, 5-12cm tall. Sterile shoots have spirals of long, linear, twisted, glaucous leaves, those of the fertile shoots being short and narrowly ovate. Flowers in umbels of six to eighteen. There are four subspecies which have in common broad rhomboid to obovate outer tepals and narrower oblanceolate inners, all notably pointed or with mucros. Subsp. hookeri has clear pink, slightly flaring funnel-shaped flowers with segments to 4cm long having a yellow transverse zone and red stippling on the inner-uppers. Subsp. cumingiana has pale silvery reddish- to greenish- to brownish-pink, narrowly funnel-shaped flowers composed of tepals to 3.5cm long with no yellow but red stippling on the two inner-uppers. Subsps. recumbens and maculata have flatter flowers with pronouncedly thickened, inrolled and darkly tinted tips, particularly the three outer tepals, which have prominent dark red spaced-out dash-like markings, the former over patches of yellow on the inner-uppers only, the latter without the yellow but, uniquely for the species, on all three inner segments. Chile, on shorelines in the central valley and coastal range between Coronel and just north of Los Vilos.
