Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Woody climbers (ascending trees or rocks, or sometimes sprawling on the ground).

Stems: Stems up to ca. 2.5 cm in diameter, stems conspicuously ringed by persistent leaf scars.

Roots: With clasping, often flattened, sometimes long and wiry adventitious roots that wrap around whatever the plant is climbing on.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, spiraled 3-ranked, clustered toward the branch ends. Blades linear lanceolate, usually 40–80 cm long, 1–3 cm wide, midrib near apex. Apex gradually attenuate. Base sheathing, auricles usually pale green, narrow, tapered, up to 11 cm long, but usually shorter, abraded or caducous. Surfaces glabrous, coriaceous. Margins just beyond auricles usually minutely serrulate with prickles 0.2–0.6 mm long. Parallel, longitudinal veins numerous, connected by perpendicular commissures to form a reticulate pattern. Sheathing on the stem. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences terminal, outer bracts green with salmon–orange base, intermediate bracts dark salmon–pink, tinged orange, fleshy, ovate–navicular, at apex the margins and dorsal costa minutely spinulose, inner bracts pink, the innermost thick, almost linear. Pistillate spadices usually 3(4) in clusters, on stout, smooth, trigonous peduncles 3–4 cm long. Fruiting spadices oblong-cylindrical, 7.5–9.5(–15) cm long, 1–3.2 cm in diameter. Flowers unisexual (plants dioecious). Calyx (sepals) absent. Corolla (petals) absent. Staminate spadices 3(4) in clusters, yellowish white, on slender, smooth peduncles up to 5 cm long, but usually shorter, the spikes ca. 10 cm long, consisting of numerous densely crowded stamens; filaments pale orange or buff, up to 15 mm long; anthers blunt–oblong, ca. 0.8 mm long, pistillodia present but usually microscopic. Pollen psilate. Ovary superior; stigmas (4)5–10 (–12) or sometimes more, usually in 2 evident rows, black, staminodia occasionally present.

Fruit: Berries ripening red; compressed; oblong; up to 10 mm long. Seeds ellipsoid up to 1.5 mm long; ca. 0.5 mm wide.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Fairly common; occurring primarily in mesic to wet forest; often on exposed ridges and slopes; the stems creeping and rooting or ascending on tree trunks.

Elevation Range: 300–1,500 m.