Plants small to moderate. Stems solitary or occasionally caespitose, erect, slender, at first covered with leaf sheaths. Leaves: sheath fibers soft, netlike, eventually sloughing off to reveal smooth to fissured stem; petiole not split at base, unarmed; abaxial hastula a low ridge or absent; adaxial hastula a crescent-shaped ridge to semi-cylindric excrescence; blade palmate; plication induplicatee (V-shaped); segments lanceolate, basally connate; cross veins obscure [conspicuous]. Inflores cences interfoliar, downcurved [long and arching], not extending beyond leaves, with 2 orders of branching; prophyll short, peduncular bracts several, sterile, tubular, distally expanded, silky-pubescent; primary branches subtended by smaller peduncular bracts. Flowers bisexual, borne singly along rachillae, short-pedicellate; perianth 1-seriate, shallowly cupulate, lobes 5--7, apiculate; stamens 7--12; filaments acute; anthers dorsifixed, twisted when dry; pistils 1, 1-carpellate, glabrous; style slender; stigma funnelform. Fruits globose; stigmatic scar apical; exocarp purplish, smooth, slightly warty when dry; mesocarp fleshy; endocarp membranaceous. Seeds globose, irregularly brain-shaped; endosperm homogeneous, bony; embryo apical [superior]; eophyll undivided, lanceolate.
Home