Small unarmed monoecious palms, either bushes or low trees, trunks ringed and often arundinaceous: leaves pinnate, pinnatisect or at least pinnately veined: spadices interfoliar or infrafoliar, either a simple spike or somewhat branched; spathe not cymba-like: flowers partially or deeply immersed in the rachilla or rachis, morphologically 1 pistillate between 2 staminates but this disposition not always the pattern, in which case the upper part of the rachilla may be almost or quite uniformly staminate; floral envelopes 6 in two series, calyx and corolla, the parts or lobes-usually imbricate in the bud except that the corolla parts of the staminate flowers are commonly valvate; stamens 6, as also the staminodes in the pistillate flower, the filaments in both cases united into a dentate or lobed tube that, in connection with the separated spreading anther-cells, constitutes the par-ticular-mark of the genus; ovary sitting in a free disk or cushion, 3-loculed, style lateral or near base, stigmas 3, 1 or 2 locules abortive: fruit a very small drupe-like 1-seeded globular or ovoid or somewhat pyriform body, the mesocarp more or less fleshy and only seldom edible; seed with basal hilum, albumen equable.
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