Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Palm-like trees 4–8 m tall, with yellow latex.

Stems: Stems unarmed, muricate, or aculeate.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades oblanceolate, 65–90 cm long, 6–12 cm wide. Apex acute. Base cuneate. Upper surfaces glabrous; lower surfaces sparsely pubescent. Margins minutely callose–denticulate, undulate toward base. Petioles absent. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 15–25–flowered, pendent, hanging below the leaves, in axillary racemes, the rachis sometimes not expanded, the raceme thus appearing subumbellate, peduncles 150–320 mm long, pedicels 4–8 mm long; hypanthium obovoid, 8–12 mm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 5-lobed, lobes dentiform, 0.5–1 mm long, distinct or rarely connate, tube adnate to ovary. Corolla zygomorphic, cream tinged with pale lilac, 40–50 mm long, 3–5 mm wide, suberect to slightly curved, the lobes connate, all 5 curved downward in the same plane, the corolla thus appearing unilabiate, glabrous, dorsally cleft to about the middle. Stamens 5, alternate with corolla lobes, connate; staminal column glabrous; anthers glabrous, the lower 2 with apical tufts of white hairs, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits, coherent but separating after anthesis or connate and forming a tube into which pollen is shed; filaments distinct or connate above, attached to the epigynous nectary disk or to base of corolla, rarely adnate to corolla tube. Ovary inferior, 2-celled; ovule placentation axile; stigma 2-lobed, wet or dry, appressed and nonreceptive as the style grows through the anther tube, pushing out the pollen, after which the stigmas spread apart and become receptive.

Fruit: Berries globose; 10–12 mm in diameter. Seeds numerous; small; brown to black; smooth; shiny; 0.2–0.5(–2) mm long; with a straight; short to spatulate dicotyledonous embryo embedded in oily endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Formerly occurring in mesic forest.

Elevation Range: 1,520–1,650 m.