Stout perennial herbs, with woody, obliquely erect rhizome, in habit strongly resembling a small Pandanus. Stems relatively short, erect, triquetrous, leafy at the base only. Leaves 3-ranked, with short, open sheaths and very long linear blades. Inflorescence terminal, paniculate, branched in the lower half, the lowest branches ternate, sometimes branched again. Lowest 3 bracts pseudowhorled, very long, leaf-like, the higher ones much smaller, the uppermost scale-like. Spikelets terete or more or less trigonous, many-flowered. Glumes subcoriaceous, spirally imbricate. Flowers hermaphrodite; terminal flower of each spikelet with a terminal ovary and several flat fascicled (probably spiral) scales each bearing a single stamen in its axil; lateral flowers strongly dorsiventrally compressed, also with a terminal ovary, but with the 2 outer scales transversal, opposite, boat-shaped, sharply keeled, ciliate on the keel, usually connate on the adaxial side, the other scales variable in number (up to c. 10 in the lower flowers, often very reduced in the upper ones), flat, linear-lanceolate, acute, each with a single stamen in its axil (or uppermost scales sterile); arrangement in the lower fertile glumes of the spikelets usually more complex: two outer scales winged on the back, enclosing a normal central flower and two lateral more or less reduced ones. Style continuous with the ovary, not or hardly thickened at the base; stigmas 2 or 3 (in the same spikelet). Fruit drupaceous, coarsely ribbed; exocarp succulent, corky when dry; endocarp bony, black.
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