Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Medium-sized to large, solitary, unarmed palms.

Stems: Stems solitary (very rarely branching).

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple (but appearing compound due to secondary splitting of the blade into leaflets). Spirally arranged. Leaf segments all in 1 plane, without a crownshaft, but appearing to be wrapped basally in burlap; seedling leaf bifid.overall blade elliptic, leaflets linear. Base petiolate. Veins parallel. Petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers of both sexes on the same inflorescence, but staminate flowers expanding and all falling before pistillate ones are receptive, rarely inflorescence entirely staminate, inflorescences interfoliar, long–pedunculate, with 2 markedly unequal, persistent primary bracts, the outer bract bicarinate, truncate, shorter than inner bract, the latter fusiform in bud, plicate–grooved (not obvious when dry), splitting abaxially. Flowers unisexual (and the plants monoecious). Calyx of 3 sepals. Corolla of 3 petals. Stamens 6. Ovary superior, 3-carpellate, but usually only a single carpel fertile.

Fruit: Fruit very large; exocarp smooth; green to yellow or orange; mesocarp thick; strongly and densely fibrous; endocarp thick; bony; hard; with 3 large opercula; usually only 1 of which covers an embryo. Seeds large; hollow; containing a large quantity of liquid.

Ploidy: 2n = 32

Habitat: Widely cultivated; persisting; and sparingly naturalized in areas of previous cultivation; primarily coastal sites.

Elevation Range: