Plants dioecious. Tuber renewed seasonally, creamy red outside, depressed globose, 1-6 cm in diam., bearing many tubercles around. Cataphylls 2 or 3, pale brown with purplish spots, membranous. Leaf solitary; petiole creamy red or pale green, without spots, 20-50 cm, base forming pseudostem, 1-2 cm in diam.; leaf blade 3-foliolate; leaflets sessile or subsessile, subleathery; central leaflet ovate, broadly elliptic, or subovate, 7-23 × 6-22 cm, base shortly cuneate to rounded, apex abruptly attenuate; lateral leaflets obliquely elliptic, 6-20 × 5-19 cm, base cuneate. Peduncle erect in flowering, recurved at fruiting, brown with white dots, shorter than petioles, 10-30 cm. Spathe dirty purple or dark purple with white or greenish white longitudinal lines; tube cylindric, 4-6 × 1.2-2 cm, throat margins slightly recurved; limb galeate-recurved, 4.5-11 × 3-5 cm, apex long acuminate with a tubular tail 5-6 cm, whiplike, pendulous. Spadix unisexual; female zone cylindric, 1.2-3.8 cm × 8-20 mm; ovaries dense, greenish purple, ca. 5 mm; ovules 2, basal, erect; stigma convex; male zone narrowly conic. Appendix recurved from middle, sometimes suberect, 1.5-4 cm × 2.5-6 mm, base attenuate into short stipe, 4-8 mm in diam., apex 1-2 mm in diam. Fl. May-Jul, fr. Sep-Oct.
Forests, thickets, grasslands; at elevations from 900-3,000 metres.
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