A herb with rhizome up to 16 cm long and 3 cm thick, outside grey and shiny, tips pink, inside bluish or blue-green with white cortex. Leaf sheaths to 50 cm long, blades elliptical to oblong-lanceolate, 30-80 cm x 9-20 cm, green with wide purplish-brown suffusion on each side of midrib on distal half. Inflorescence on a separate shoot, bracts pale green, coma bracts purple; corolla about 4.5 cm long, deep crimson-pink. Labellum about 17 mm x 17 mm, pale yellow with deep yellow median band, other staminodes longitudinally folded, pale yellow, anther spurred.

Depurative and anthelmintic (rhizome)

PROSEA (Plant Resources of South-East Asia) Foundation

Used as a medicine for colic, obesity, rheumatism, asthma and cough; applied externally to scurvy; suggested as an application for mental derangement; both internally and externally for treating exanthema, and as a poultice to treat itch (rhizome); given to women after childbirth to accelerate the lochia (decoction of rhizome).