Stems clustered or less often solitary, ringed with prominent leaf scars, tall to short or subterranean. Leaves 5-11, pinnate or occasionally undivided; leaf sheaths closed, forming a prominent, yellowish to reddish green crownshaft (rarely open and not forming crownshafts), usually covered with variously colored scales; pinnae regularly arranged along rachis, spreading in same plane, linear to sigmoid, 1-to several veined, at leaf apex pinnae joined with only a short split at tip, giving pinnae a lobed appearance. Inflorescences branched to 1 order, with a few rachillae, sometimes spicate, borne below crownshaft, rarely among leaves, covered initially with prophyll; rachillae becoming pendulous, seldom remaining erect, usually smooth, sometimes hairy; flowers unisexual, borne throughout in triads of 1 female flower flanked by 2 male flowers, these arranged distichously along rachillae, or less often tristichously or spirally. Fruits red, orange, or black, small, ellipsoid to globose or spindle-shaped, commonly beaked, 1-seeded, ripening through a series of colors, commonly from green to pink to red to black; endosperm ruminate, rarely homogeneous; germination adjacent; eophylls bifid.
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