Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Palm-like trees 1–4 m tall.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades pinnately parted or divided, more so in juveniles, blades 20–37 cm long, 10–19 cm wide (across the segments)' segments 8–12 per side, narrowly oblong, 15–35 mm wide. Apex acute. Upper surfaces green, muricate (aculeate in juveniles); lower surfaces pale green, pubescent and muricate (aculeate in juveniles). Margins irregularly dentate or lobed (cleft, parted, or divided in juveniles), the lobes acute to obtuse. Petioles 4–13 cm long, muricate (aculeate in juveniles). Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 5–8–flowered, clustered among the leaves, muricate, peduncles 20–60 mm long, pedicels 15–25 mm long, bracts linear, 15–30 mm long, 1–2 mm wide; hypanthium oblong to broadly ellipsoid, 10–15 mm long, 5–10 mm wide. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 5-lobed, lobes narrowly triangular, 8–24 mm long, 2–4 mm wide, tube adnate to ovary. Corolla zygomatic, blackish purple or greenish white suffused with purple, 70–80 mm long, 7–10 mm wide, densely pubescent to muricate externally, glabrous within, the tube arcuate, the lobes spreading, 1⁄2–¾ as long as the tube. Stamens 5, alternate with corolla lobes, connate; staminal column glabrous; anthers glabrous, all 5 or only the lower 2 with apical tufts of white hairs, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits, coherent but separating after anthesis or connate and forming a tube into which pollen is shed; filaments distinct or connate above, attached to the epigynous nectary disk or to base of corolla, rarely adnate to corolla tube.

Fruit: Berries yellow; ellipsoid; 14–25 mm long; crowned by the persistent calyx lobes. Seeds numerous; small; brown to black; smooth; shiny; 0.2–0.5(–2) mm long; with a straight; short to spatulate dicotyledonous embryo embedded in oily endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occurring in wet forest and margins of subalpine forest; windward slopes.

Elevation Range: 1,520–2,000 m.