Herbs, evergreen, dioecious, rhizomatous, perennial, glabrous. Rhizomes covered by appressed scales. Stems branched, smooth and terete near the base, flattened and concavo-convex above, with scabrous lateral margins, pink with reddish sheaths when young but grey, rigid and wiry when old. Leaves consisting of a scarious sheath; the lamina subulate; without a ligule at the transition to the sheath. Inflorescence repeatedly branched, with 2–4 branches emerging from upper sheaths; ultimate branches with one or a few small clusters of flowers; each flower with 1 or 2 membranous bracts; female flowering axis zig-zag. Spathes: lower ones similar to culm sheaths but smaller; the uppermost hyaline. Flowers: tepals ovate, concave, reddish or yellowish brown, soft, hyaline, acute; inner tepals longer. Male flowers: stamen filaments free. Female flowers: ovary shortly stipitate, 1-locular, not angled; the style single, stout, densely plumose with stigmatic branches that are branched and papillose; style attachment slightly excentric. Fruit a globose or elliptic small drupe with a thin fleshy outer pericarp and a hard inner pericarp, shed with a short fleshy pedicel and bracts and perianth attached. Stem anatomy: with the epidermis tanniniferous and heavily thickened on the outer wall; stomates sunken, overarched by cuticular projections of epidermal cells; substomatal cavities extend deeply into the chlorenchyma of 3–4 layers of short palisade cells; pillar cells, protective cells and sclerenchyma girders absent; with a parenchyma sheath 1 (or 2) cell thick, surrounding the sclerenchyma cylinder; outer vascular bundles small and embedded in the sclerenchyma, the inner bundles larger with narrow sclerenchyma sheaths; the central tissue parenchymatous with no central cavity; silica absent.
Home