Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Large, coarse, glabrous, often tree-like perennial herbs from a massive sympodial corm that is monocarpic or suckering and pleiocarpic.

Stems: Pseudostems made from leaf bases.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Spirally arranged. Blades expanded. Base with a course basal sheath, sheathing bases closely overlapping and appressed to each other, forming an erect, herbaceous pseudostem from which the petioles depart at the summit. Margins entire. Veins parallel. Short-petiolate to long-petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers irregular, functionally unisexual, those subtended by the lower bracts pistillate, those subtended by the upper bracts staminate. Tepals 6, in 2 series, petaloid, upper 5 connate into a tubular structure, adaxial tepal distinct. Stamens 5 with 1 reduced staminode or 6 and all functional; filaments slender, distinct; anthers linear, dithecal. Ovary inferior, 3-celled; style terminal, slender; stigma 3-lobed.

Fruit: Berry-like; fleshy with a firmer; separable exocarp. Seeds few to numerous; seed coat thick; hard.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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