Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Palm-like trees 5–10 m tall, with yellow latex.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades oblanceolate, blades 50–60 cm long, 12–15 cm wide. Apex acuminate. Base cuneate. Upper surfaces glabrous; lower surfaces pubescent. Margins undulate, minutely callose–denticulate, shallowly lobed at base. Petioles 3.5–6.5 cm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 5–10–flowered, axillary, pendent, hanging below the leaves, peduncles 100–180 mm long, pedicels 2–3 mm long; hypanthium obconical, 16–18 mm long, 14–15 mm wide, glabrous. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 5-lobed, lobes deltate, ca. 5 mm long, ca. 5 mm wide, distinct or rarely connate, apex acute, tube adnate to ovary. Corolla zygomorphic, blackish purple, 70–80 mm long, 5–8 mm wide, glabrous, the tube curved, the lobes ¾ as long to as long as the tube, connate, spreading. Stamens 5, alternate with corolla lobes, connate; staminal column glabrous; anthers glabrous, 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. Ovary inferior, 2-celled; ovule placentation axile; stigma 2-lobed, wet or dry, appressed and nonreceptive as the style grows through the anther tube, pushing out the pollen, after which the stigmas spread apart and become receptive.

Fruit: Berries blackish purple; globose; ca. 25 mm long. 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: Wet forests.

Elevation Range: 725–800 m.