Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Large, coarse, glabrous, often tree-like perennial herbs from a massive sympodial corm that is always suckering and sympodial.

Stems: Pseudostems made from leaf bases.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Spirally arranged. Blades expanded. Base with a course basal sheath, sheathing bases closely overlapping and appressed to each other, forming an erect, herbaceous pseudostem from which the petioles depart at the summit. Margins entire. Veins parallel. Short-petiolate to long-petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in compact, bractless, monochasial cymes borne on an inflorescence axis arising from the corm that grows up through the pseudostem and is exserted at the summit, the exposed portion bearing spirally arranged, leathery bracts, each subtending a cyme. Flowers irregular, functionally unisexual, those subtended by the lower bracts pistillate, those subtended by the upper bracts staminate. Tepals 6, in 2 series, petaloid, upper 5 connate into a tubular structure, adaxial tepal distinct. Stamens 5 with 1 reduced staminode; filaments slender, distinct; anthers linear, dithecal. Ovary inferior, 3-celled; style terminal, slender; stigma 3-lobed.

Fruit: Berry-like; fleshy with a firmer; separable exocarp. Seeds few to numerous; seed coat thick; hard.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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