Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Understory shrubs to large trees.

Stems: Stems clustered, sometimes spreading by stolons, less often solitary, usually covered with persistent, fibrous leaf bases.

Roots: Roots fibrous.

Leaves: Leaves appearing pinnately compound due to secondary splitting of the blade. 5-30, seldom undivided; leaf sheaths open, fibrous, commonly persisting on stems. Pinnae linear to rhomboid, sometimes lobed on margins. pinnae regularly or irregularly arranged, basal few borne in clusters, silvery gray abaxially. Leaflet apices jagged. Leaflet bases sometimes with an ear-shaped projection overlapping rachis. Petioles usually covered with distinctive scales. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Plants usually semelparous; flowering proceeding from top of stem downward (basipetal), rarely in opposite direction (acropetal). Inflorescences branched to 2 orders, rarely spicate, borne among leaves, usually unisexual by suppression of either female or male flowers, solitary or rarely several at a node, covered with several persistent bracts, female inflorescences commonly produced first at apex of stem, and male ones later, below; rachillae 1-100 or more; flowers borne in triads with a central female flower and 2 lateral male flowers.

Fruit: Fruits red; yellowish; or purplish; large; ellipsoid; globose; ovoid; or oblong; 1-3-seeded; mesocarp with irritant crystals of calcium oxalate. Seeds with a homogeneous endosperm; germination remote; eophylls undivided or bifid with jagged margins.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: