Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Unbranched tree up to 15 m tall. The crown typically contains about twenty ascending to spreading leaves.

Stems: Trunk smooth, grayish, and 25 to 50 cm in diameter.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Spirally arranged. Blades fan shaped, 1.5 m long and divided about one–third from the apex into about sixty stiff–tipped segments. Upper surfaces distinctly green; lower surfaces rusty brown to nearly golden silvery. Veins parallel. Petioles clasping the stem, approximately 1.5 m long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in branched or unbranched inflorescences of one or two panicles; the peduncle is approximately 115 cm long and 2.5 cm in diameter. Overall the inflorescences are equal to or slightly longer than the leaf stalks (1.5 m). The densely arranged branchlets of the panicle are about 15–20 cm long and completely covered with permanent, reddish brown or yellow, feltlike to cottony or even woolly hairs. The branchlets are somewhat angular and marked with rather deep, irregularly spirally alternate notches where the flowers are attached. Flowers bisexual (perfect), sessile. Calyx cupular, shallowly 3-lobed, prominently nerved or smooth when dry. Corolla of 3 petals, adnate basally to the staminal filament tube to about the height of the calyx, the distinct lobes valvate in bud, caducous as the flower expands, prominently pocketed and furrowed within, prominently nerved when dry. Stamens 6; filaments flattened, thickish, connate basally into a tube equaling or exceeding the calyx and surrounding the carpels, then distinct and abruptly subulate, not inflexed at apex; anthers erect in bud, dorsifixed, spreading–erect to versatile at anthesis, oblong in outline, bifid basally nearly to the point of insertion, apex emarginate, the connective narrow; anther sacs longitudinally and laterally dehiscent. Ovary superior; carpels 3, normally only 1 maturing, coherent only basally; ovules 1 per carpel, with the broad–based styles connate above into a trigonous column tapering to a shallowly trifid stigma; ovules anatropous, erect, attached at the base of the placenta.

Fruit: Fruit shiny dark brown to black; globose–ovoid about 4.5 cm long and 3.8–4 cm wide when mature. When heavily laden; the fruit stalks hang down below the leaves; often resting against the skirt of old; persistent; dead leaves. Seeds distinct from endocarp except at the hilum; shiny; endosperm homogeneous except for a shallow invagination of the seed coat below the raphe; embryo lateral near the base opposite the raphe.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Wet forests.

Elevation Range: 600–1,220 m.