Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Fleshy herbs.

Stems: Stems greenish with reddish purple splotches, erect to ascending from a very short repent base, stout, ca. 60–150 cm long, 8–20 mm in diameter, unbranched or few–branched in upper part, internodes 3–4 cm long or up to 12 cm long in lower part of stem, glabrous to sparsely hirsute, the hairs spreading, ca. 1 mm long.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Whorled (5–8 per node). Blades linear–lanceolate to narrowly elliptic, 12–20 cm long, 1.5–4 cm wide. Apex long-acuminate. Base narrowly cuneate to attenuate. Surfaces glabrous or sparsely hirsute on veins; Upper surfaces dark green; lower surfaces pale green, relatively thin, coriaceous, drying chartaceous. Margins entire. Palmately 5-veined or pinnately veined with 2–4 pairs, veins impressed on upper surface. Petioles 0.5–1 cm long, glabrate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in spikes 1 to several, terminal and axillary, 8–12 cm long, the rachis 3.5–4 mm in diameter, glabrous, flowers densely congested, peduncles ca. 2–3.5 cm long, glabrous. Flowers bisexual (perfect), perianth absent. Each flower subtended by a peltate bract. Calyx (sepals) absent. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 2. Ovary superior, turbinate, 1-carpellate, 1-celled, apex ± oblique; ovules 1 per cell, orthotropous, erect; stigmas 1–4, terminal.

Fruit: Fruit subglobose; ca. 1 mm in diameter; papillose–viscid with sessile glands. Seeds 1 per fruit; with scanty endosperm and copious; starchy perisperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Mesic forest.

Elevation Range: 1,250–1,370 m.