Low juicy herbs with a short, unbranched, largely overground green rhizome with pale roots; stem curving up into a short erect portion bearing several leaves, leaving thin, almost ring-shaped scars; plants almost glabrous or with sparse uniseriate hairs. Leaves papyraceous when dry; blade ovate, with 6-8 pairs of arching basal and suprabasal nerves, shallowly depressed above, secondary intervenation fine-trabeculate, margin entire; petiole long, towards the base canaliculate and shortly sheathing, with the edge hyaline and fringed-hairy. Inflorescences axillary, either short-peduncled simple racemes or long-peduncled compound racemes; flowers and bracts dotted with raphides, bracteoles absent. Flowers with one kind of perianth, 5-merous; tepals free or partly united, imbricate, outside papillose, persisting in fruit. Stamens epitepalous; filaments apparently absent since they are completely united into a conspicuous fleshy ring, which is either free or partly fused to the base of the fleshy flower tube, which, together with the juicy-fleshy torus and the stigma, form a solid hypanthium with a flat or concave top; anthers, consisting of two short, broadly ovate thecae, each opening by a longitudinal lateral slit. The thecae are sessile, laterally directed and separated by broad fleshy connectives, which taper into slender or broad inward-curved appendices, the tips of which are fused with the stigma; the stamens and stigma thus form 5 pouches in the fleshy hypanthium, each containing two thecae, one from each of the adjacent anthers. Viewed from above, the appearance is as if the anthers are alternitepalous (P. egregia), or anthers shortly protruding (P. sumatrana). Ovary inferior, one-celled, ovules numerous on three inward projecting longitudinally furrowed, parietal placentas; style short and inconspicuous, stigma broad, flattish, entire or 3-or 4-lobed, papillose. Fruit berry-like, sharply longitudinally 10-ridged, the perianth persisting. Seeds many, with a collar-like undulate aril covering about one third of the seed; exotesta (sarcotesta) transparent; pericarp strongly ribbed; endosperm large; embryo small.
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