Plants almost always epiphytic, rarely terrestrial and then perhaps only by accident, the caudex short or sometimes elongate and subscandent, the internodes short or elongate; petioles short or elongate, short-vaginate at the base, always geniculate near the apex; blades usually coriaceous or thick-coriaceous, rarely thin, very variable in form, simple or rarely digitately compound; peduncles commonly elongate, the spathe generally persistent, often colored, narrow, spread-ing from the base of the spadix, often decurrent at the base; spadix sessile or stipitate, cylindric, conoid, or caudiform, densely many-flowered, usually green or violaceous green, more or less elongate in fruit, flowering from the base upward; flowers perfect, perigoniate; sepals 4, often as broad as long, fornicate above and subtruncate, connivent, somewhat accrescent in fruit; stamens 4, the filaments subcompressed, slightly narrowed into the connective, equaling the sepals, the anthers short, the cells ovate or oblong-ovate, opening by a longitudinal slit; ovary ovoid, oblong, or obovoid, truncate at the apex or attenuate to the style, 2-celled; ovules 2 or 1 in each cell; style none or short, the stigma small, discoid, suborbicular or oblong, subbilobate; berries succulent and juicy at maturity, variously colored, 2-celled, the cells usually 1-seeded; seeds oblong, plane or con-vex, somewhat attenuate to the apex.
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