Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect, stout, tall or comparatively low perennial herbs.

Stems: Rhizomes creeping. pseudostems robust.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, distichous. Margins entire. Lateral veins parallel, diverging from prominent midrib. Petioles short; ligules simple, well-developed. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences spicate, densely congested, ovoid, subglobose, capitate, or cylindrical, surrounded by an involucre of few to numerous, often conspicuous sterile bracts, fertile bracts subtending a single bracteole and flower, inner ones narrow, outer ones broader and becoming transitional with involucral bracts, bracteoles tubular, 2–3–dentate, persistent. Flowers slightly fragrant, bisexual (perfect), zygomorphic, pedicellate. Calyx 3-lobed, the lobes unequal; Calyx tubular, often split down 1 side, usually 3–dentate. Corolla adnate with the stamens into a floral tube, distally 3-lobed, floral tube about as long as or shorter than calyx, the lobes usually shorter than the tube, unequal. Stamens 5, in 2 whorls, only the posterior one of the inner whorl fertile, the other 2 members of inner whorl connate to form a highly variable, often conspicuous labellum; labellum entire or emarginate, short, or with a conspicuous elongate central lobe and lateral lobes that may overlap the stamen, basally adnate to the filament forming a tube above the insertion of the corolla lobes; lateral staminodes absent or merely rudimentary; distinct part of filament very short or absent; anther ± crested, apex often emarginate, nearly erect or at a sharp acute angle with respect to the filament. Ovary inferior, with 2 variously developed apical nectary glands, 3-celled, sometimes incompletely so, rarely 1-celled, placentation axile, parietal (or essentially basal), or rarely free-central; ovules usually numerous; style filiform, often enveloped in a groove of the fertile stamen and embraced by the thecae; stigma various, often papillose and protruding beyond anther.

Fruit: Fruit indehiscent; obovoid or subglobose; subterete or angular; smooth or somewhat warty. Seeds arillate.

Ploidy:

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