Slender but mostly tall tree palms, monoecious, unarmed, trunk ringed, solitary or plant soboliferous, leaves pinnate, pinnae gradually narrowed' and acuminate, sheaths of the petioles forming a conspicuous crownshaft, spadix infrafoliar, in general somewhat like Roystonea in appearance but without the stout columnar trunk and the enormous hanging fruit-clusters of that palm, with a less pro-nounced crownshaft and a very different fruit: spadix with long slender drooping branches or rachillae that are not attached to rachis by a suddenly expanded base; spathes 2, cymba-like: flowers staminate and pistillate in the same spadix, typically in 3's with the middle one pistillate but usually irregular in this respect and the upper end of the rachilla-mostly staminate, free or only partially immersed in the axis; sepals very small, pistillate petals valvate; stamens 6: fruit small, globose, 1-celled, drupe-like, with more or-less succulent exterior but soon drying hard into a fibrous covering of the nutlet or seed, not immersed in the rachis, stigma lateral or at least not apical, embryo mostly lateral but sometimes super-lateral or basal; albumen either plane or ruminate.
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