Tall single-trunked monoecious pinnate-leaved unarmed palms bearing a dense high crown of ascending-spreading long leaves: spadices infrafoliar, pendent, the thick heavy angled rachillae several from a very short peduncle, bearing flowers and fruits in deep pockets or cavities in several lengthwise rows; cymbas 2, ridged on back, soon deciduous: flowers large, whitish or ochroleucous, typically in 3's with pistillate in middle but usually more or less scattered, all sunken in pits pro-vided with a pronounced lid or lip; staminates with narrow or lanceolate imbricate sepals and a cylindric corolla with obtuse valvate lobes, stamens many, the fila-ments united, pistillode miinute or none; pistillate flowers about the size of the staminates, with imbricate free sepals and much larger imbricate petals two of which are boat-shaped and keeled, staminodia present in the form of teeth in the tube: fruit oblong or ellipsoid with basal stigma; seed with elongated lateral hilum, albumen equable.
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