Stems: single or branched, slender, erect. Leaves: the basal ones obovate or spatulate, obtuse, narrowed into petioles, the stem ones ovate, acute sessile, the uppermost smaller. Flowers: terminal and axillary. Fruit: capsule narrowly oblong, two-valved, seeds globose-ovoid, smooth.

A plant much resembling a Gentian, with tall erect stiff stems bearing pairs of ovate leaves up them, and having a tuft of larger ones at the base. The dull greenish-purple, rarely white, terminal and axillary flowers are most curiously shaped, having a campanulate corolla four to five cleft with the lobes convolute in the bud, and each with a hollow deflexed spur or projection below.