Calamus gracilis Roxb.

Stems clustered, climbing, to 30 m, to 2 cm in diam. Leaf sheaths green with mottled, dark brown and whitish hairs, without spines or with scattered, black-tipped, conic-based spines to 0.5 cm; ocreas small; knees present; flagella present; petioles very short; rachis to 0.7 m with 8-15 linear or lanceolate pinnae per side, these regularly arranged but with wide gaps between groups, shiny green, curled over at tips, apical ones inserted close together in a fan shape, apical pair not joined at their bases; middle pinnae 25-35 cm, 1.5-2.5 cm wide at mid-point, adaxial and abaxial veins and margins bristly; cirri absent. Inflorescences to 0.7 m, flagellate; inflorescence bracts tubular. Fruits yellowish or orange, ovoid to ellipsoid, to 2 × 1 cm, stalked, scales grooved.

It is a subtropical plant. It grows in evergreen forest between 300-850 m altitude. In southern China it is in lowland rain forests between 800-1,500 m above sea level.