Bulb to 2.5cm across, sometimes with a few bulbils. Stem 3-10cm tall. Leaves four to eight, all alternate. Flowers greenish or yellowish, marked and tessellated with brown, having a spermatic scent. Tepals 1.5-2.8cm, with a linear nectary running from the angle of the bell towards the apex. Style trifid, smooth, divided to about halfway. Capsule not winged. Four subspecies are recognised: subsp. crassifolia (syn. F. ophioglossifolia), usually has only four broad leaves, and a nectary without a raised ridge. Southwestern to north-eastern Turkey, in loose limestone screes. Subsp. kurdica, (syn. F. kurdica F. grossheimiana, F. foliosa, F. karadaghensis, F. wanensis), is a variable plant, but usually has five to seven glaucous leaves, narrower than subsp. crassifolia. The nectary forms a raised ridge on the inside of the blunt-tipped inner tepals. Mountain steppe in eastern Turkey, western Iran and northern Iraq. Subsp. hakkarensis is close to subsp. kurdica, but has shining green leaves, and smaller flowers with acute inner petals. South-eastern Turkey, on high mountain steppes, by late snow patches at 1500-3000m. Subsp. poluninii has small upright or horizontal whitish flowers with green veins and shorter nectaries, about 5mm long. Northern Iraq and western Iran, in limestone screes and rocky soil by late snow patches.
