Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Medium-sized to tall, solitary, armed palms.

Stems: Stems more or less roughened, sometimes with petiole bases and sheaths persistent below crown.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, spiral. Blades costapalmate; seeding leaf lanceolate. Sheaths fibrous, unarmed, petioles elongate, terminating in a prominent adaxial ligule, the margin usually armed with sharp teeth, rarely unarmed (in mature L. chinensis). Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences interfoliar, elongate, paniculately branched, with progressively reduced tubular bracts on peduncle and at base of each primary branch, these again 1–2-branched, ultimate axes subtended by open bracts and bearing solitary sessile flowers, or flowers clustered and sessile on a much condensed branch. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx of 3 sepals; sepals usually thickened at base and shortly to prominently connate, lobes +/- slightly imbricate. Corolla of 3 petals, connate basally and adnate to the staminal tube about as high as the calyx, lobes broadened and rather abruptly tapered to a filiform tip, not inflexed at apex in bud. Stamens 6; anthers dorsifixed, erect in bud, basically versatile at anthesis. Ovary superior; carpels 3, distinct, but usually only 1 maturing; ovules 1 per carpel; styles connate in a 3-angled cone briefly 3-lobed at apex.

Fruit: Fruit ellipsoid to globose with obscure apical or subapical stigmatic scar; abortive carpels basal; exocarp smooth; thin; mesocarp somewhat fleshy with some longitudinal anastomosing flattened fibers adjacent to the crustaceous endocarp; this sometimes at least somewhat coherent to the seed. Seeds ellipsoid to globose with small basal hilum and elongate raphe; endosperm homogeneous except for a deep intrusion of seed coat below the raphe; embryo lateral near the middle on the antirapheal side.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: