Authors: Phil.  

Botanical Description

rhizomatous perennial forming colonies of numerous, adventitious tight or elongated rosettes 1.5-5cm high, covered in velvety-woolly grey hairs. Leaves narrowly to broadly spathulate, oblanceolate or rhomboid-ovate, 6-15 by 3-6mm, darkly mucronate, tapering to a short petiole. Flowers solitary, on peduncles 7-10mm long with a pair of small, sessile bracts, the tube red-violet veined greenish-violet, 1-1.2cm long, the petals white, obovate-oblong, 6-8 by 2.5-4mm long, spring to summer in the wild. Chile, Antofagasta and Atacama, in loose sandy, gravelly fields and gentle, open scree slopes in the Atacaman pampas or steppe at 2500-3750m.