Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Terrestrial or epiphytic, subacaulescent, rhizomatous perennial herbs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. 3-ranked. Blades 30–160 cm long, 1–5(–7) cm wide. Surfaces with scales, those of the upper surfaces connate and peeling off in skin like pieces, often completely absent in old leaves; lower surfaces densely covered with closely appressed scales, ± densely woolly pubescent beneath scales, both scales and hairs tending to fall off with age, occasionally both surfaces essentially glabrous, densely white to brownish shaggy pubescent toward base. Margins entire. Veins parallel, conspicuous. Sheathing. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in scapes (10–)20–120 cm long, usually densely shaggy pubescent; staminate flowers in racemes 3–20 cm long, pedicels 3–10 mm long, bracts 4–11 mm long; pistillate flowers in racemes 3–18 cm long, pedicels 2–5 mm long, bracts 4–9 mm long. Flowers unisexual (and the plants dioecious). Tepals green greenish brown to yellow, rose, dark brownish maroon, or occasionally white, densely pubescent or glabrous; tepals of staminate flowers 4.5–8.5 mm long (outer) and 3.5–7 mm long (inner); tepals of pistillate flowers 3.5–7 mm long (outer) and 3.5–6 mm long (inner). Stamens 6, staminate flowers with anthers 1–4.2 mm long; filaments {1.5–)2.2–4 mm long; pistillate flowers anthers not fertile, 0.4–1.3 mm long; filaments 1–2.8 mm long. Ovary superior. Staminate flowers with a pistillode 2–6 mm long; pistillate flowers with an ovary 4–6 mm long; style 0.5–2 mm long.

Fruit: Berries orange; subglobose to ellipsoid; 5–9 mm long; 4–6 mm in diameter. Seeds 4–14; black; irregularly ovoid to fusiform; 2.1– 4.6 mm long.

Ploidy: 2n = 60*

Habitat: Epiphytic or terrestrial; in mesic to wet forest and bogs.

Elevation Range: 610–2,230 m.