This plant is a perennial bulb-producing herb of the Liliaceae (lily family) with showy deep red to maroon flowers with yellow checkers. Individual flowering plants can reach up to 70 cm (28 inches) in height and produce green to purplish, lanceolate to linear leaves on the flowering stalks in whorls of 3 to 5. Non-flowering plants produce one 0.6 to 72-cm (0.24 to 28-inch) long fleshy, linear to oblong leaf. Plants without flowers cannot be identified to species level because leaves are indistinguishable from other Fritillaria spp. Stems support from 1 to 15 flowers. The flowers are 3.5 to 4 cm (1.47 to 1.6 inches) six-petaled, hang downward, and are trumpet-shaped, often with flaring tips. Plants occasionally produce a broadly winged fruit, which very rarely yield viable seed. The fritillary also produces a bulb which in turn produces numbers (50-100) of tiny “rice-grain” bulblets each year. ription available