Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Unbranched tree to 9 m tall or even more. sometimes attaining maturity when very small and nearly trunkless. the crown typically contains 35–40 ascending to stiffly spreading leaves.

Stems: Trunk smooth, grayish 20–25 cm in diameter.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Spirally arranged. Blades 60–90 cm long and 60–90 cm wide, slightly wavy; divided nearly to one half the lenght into up to sixty stiff–tipped segments. Upper surfaces glossy green; lower surfaces conspicuously silvery grayish. Veins parallel. Petioles 30–60 cm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences with up to three very long primary branches that are equal in length to or slightly exceed the leaf in flower but expand and greatly exceeding the leaf in fruit. Branchlets are up to 10 cm long and glabrous or densely covered with velvety hairs. Flowers bisexual (perfect), sessile. Calyx cupular, shallowly 3-lobed, prominently nerved or smooth when dry. Corolla of 3 petals, adnate basally to the staminal filament tube to about the height of the calyx, the distinct lobes valvate in bud, caducous as the flower expands, prominently pocketed and furrowed within, prominently nerved when dry. Stamens 6; filaments flattened, thickish, connate basally into a tube equaling or exceeding the calyx and surrounding the carpels, then distinct and abruptly subulate, not inflexed at apex; anthers erect in bud, dorsifixed, spreading–erect to versatile at anthesis, oblong in outline, bifid basally nearly to the point of insertion, apex emarginate, the connective narrow; anther sacs longitudinally and laterally dehiscent. Ovary superior; carpels 3, normally only 1 maturing, coherent only basally; ovules 1 per carpel, anatropous, erect, attached at the base of the placenta; styles broad–based, connate above into a trigonous column tapering to a shallowly trifid stigma.

Fruit: Fruit shiny; black; ellipsoid to spherical up to 5 cm long and 4 cm wide when mature. Seeds distinct from endocarp except at the hilum; shiny; endosperm homogeneous except for a shallow invagination of the seed coat below the raphe; embryo lateral near the base opposite the raphe.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Wet forests.

Elevation Range: 450–670 m.