Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Medium sized to large rhizomatous herbs usually forming dense clones with erect leafy shoots in groups of few (1–2) to numerous (more than 50).

Stems: Pseudostems composed of overlapping sheathing leaf bases.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Leaves distichous. Apex acute. Surfaces glabrous. Margins entire. Petiolate and sheathing. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in erect or pendent inflorescences, consisting of brightly colored, leaf-like, distichous or spirally arranged bracts, each subtending a cincinnus of flowers, each flower in turn subtended by a membranous floral bract. Perfect, perianth consisting of 2 whorls connate at base with varying degrees of fusion within and between whorls. Calyx of 2 connate abaxial sepals and 1 nearly distinct adaxial sepal. Corolla of 3 petals, connate except for distinct margins opposite distinct sepal. Fertile stamens 5, staminode 1; opposite distinct sepal; filaments linear, attached to base of perianth tube; anthers tetrathecal, opening longitudinally. Ovary inferior, 3-celled; ovules 1 per cell, erect; style 1.

Fruit: Drupes 1–3–seeded; blue or red to orange at maturity. Seeds surrounded by a stony; roughened endocarp (pyrenes); embryo straight; endosperm copious.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: