Clustering, high-climbing, spiny, pleonanthic, hermaphrodite palms; stems suckering sympodially. Leaves displaying a remarkable plasticity of form from flabellate juvenile leaves to regularly or irregularly pinnate adult leaves, in adult and some juvenile stems terminating in a cirrus armed with reflexed thorns and more massive paired reflexed acanthophylls; leaf-sheath unarmed, usually glabrous, occasionally with chocolate-coloured or paler indumentum; ocrea well developed, usually long-persistent, unarmed, truncate; petiole present in juvenile foliage, very short to absent in most adult leaves; rachis usually with lateral reflexed spines; leaflets few–many, the basal few often modified as spiny ‘aphlebiae’, reflexed and clasping the stem (function not known); the distal leaves uni-or very occasionally pluricostulate, usually moderately to fiercely armed with marginal spines, otherwise unarmed, lanceolate, suborbicular to rhomboid, occasionally apiculate, normally at least part of the distal margins praemorse, concolorous or rarely discolorous, occasionally with scattered chocolate-coloured scales. Inflorescence axillary, shorter than the leaves, emerging from the ocrea, branching to 1 order; peduncle short; rachillae arranged subdistichously, spreading, subtended by very small inconspicuous bracts with triangular limbs, and bearing flowers in pairs throughout their length, each pair subtended by a minute annular bract. Flowers hermaphrodite; calyx tubular with 3 low triangular lobes; corolla ± twice the length of the calyx, with 3 short triangular lobes; stamens 6, epipetalous, borne near the mouth of the corolla-tube, united basally, the free filaments very short, each bearing a small pair of anthers; ovary covered with reflexed scales and tipped with 3 stigmas, united for most of their length. Fruit somewhat oblong, covered in reflexed scales, and tipped by the stigmatic remains, calyx and corolla persistent. Seeds 1–3, variously shaped, often somewhat lobed and grooved; testa thin; endosperm homogeneous; embryo lateral.
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