Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Medium-sized, solitary-stemmed, unarmed palms.

Stems: Caudex gray, straight, ringed with leaf scars.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple but appearing compound (pinnate) due to secondary splitting of the blade. Spirally arranged. Leaves with strongly elongate, tubular sheaths forming a conspicuous crownshaft, abscissing cleanly, leaflets in a single plane, midrib twisting slightly the blade turning edgewise; seedling leaf bifid. Petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers usually in triads of a central pistillate flower, with a staminate flower on either side, in infrafoliar inflorescences, these expanding after leaves fall, primary bracts 2, of similar length, deciduous one after the other, peduncles short, panicles many-branched, the rachillae pendulous at first, becoming more open and divaricate; staminate flowers expanding in advance of pistillate flowers. Flowers unisexual (and the plants monoecious). Sepals small, 3–keeled, obtuse and imbricate. Corolla usually of 3 petals; ovate to oblong, subacute and valvate, bearing 8–24. Stamens and a pistillode; anthers versatile and dorsifixed. Ovary superior. Pistillate flowers more or less rounded, seated in a calyx-like cupule of bracts, calyx and corolla imbricate and of similar length, perianth accrescent after anthesis, staminodia sometimes present, ovary 3-angled, 1-celled; stigmas 3.

Fruit: Fruit coral pink or red at maturity; globose–oblong or ellipsoid; exocarp soft; becoming thin and readily separating when dry; exposing a layer or covering of strong longitudinal fibers. Seeds 1 per fruit; not furrowed; raphe a band of loose or embedded fibers; albumen prominently ruminate.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: