Plants low or rather tall, terrestrial, the caudices thick, often elongate, pros-trate, and rooting, the sap milky; petioles long, vaginate to the middle or higher, terete above; blades oblong, very thick and fleshy when living, the costa thick, disappearing toward the apex of the blade, the primary lateral nerves numerous, ascending, arcuate toward the margin, not united into a collective nerve; pedun-cles shorter than the leaves, the spathe oblong, persistent, the lower portion convolute, open at the throat and expanded into a spreading or recurved limb; spadix erect, slightly shorter than the spathe, often stipitiform at the base and adnate to the spathe, the pistillate portion of the spadix remotely many-flowered, the staminate part subcylindric, densely many-flowered, separated from the pistil-late by an almost naked interval; flowers unisexual, naked; staminate flowers with 4 stamens, these connate to form a sessile, thick, 4-or 5-sulcate synandrium trun-cate at the apex; anthers contiguous, the cells obovoid, opening by an apical slit; pistillate flowers with 4-5 claviform staminodia, these rounded at the thickened apex, longer than the ovary, spreading; pistil 2-or 3-carpellate, sessile, depressed-ovoid, 2-or 3-lobate, 2-or 3-celled, sometimes 1-carpellate; ovules 1 in each cell, erect, anatropous; style none, the stigma 2-or 3-lobate, concave in the middle, the lobes thick; fruit baccate, 2-or 3-lobate or globose, crowned by the remnants of the stigma, 1-to 3-celled, the cells 1-seeded; seeds globose or ovoid, the testa thick, smooth; endosperm none.
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