Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Palms.

Stems: Stems small to very large, solitary or clustered, columnar or swollen, usually ringed with conspicuous leaf scars.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves compound (bipinnate). 4–20, spread out along stem, or borne in a compact crown at top of stem; leaf sheaths closed, not forming crownshafts. Each primary pinna made up of several secondary pinnae borne on a secondary rachis terminated by a pinna; individual secondary pinnae triangular, with jagged outer margins, often spreading in different planes. Petioles short or elongate and then rounded in cross section, covered with whitish or brownish hairs, sometimes striped. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences usually branched to 1 order, rarely spicate, borne either among or below leaves, covered with many persistent bracts; peduncle bearing a prophyll and several peduncular bracts; rachillae usually many, long and pendulous. Plants unisexual; plants monoecious, semelparous, flowering proceeding from top of stem downward (basipetal). Flowers unisexual, borne in threes of 1 central female and 2 lateral male. Calyx of 3 sepals. Corolla of male flowers either yellow or purplish, each with 3 petals. Stamens 6–150. Ovary superior.

Fruit: Fruits orange; red; or purple; medium sized; usually ± globose; 1– or 2–seeded; mesocarp filled with irritant needle–shaped crystals; endosperm ruminate (homogeneous in one species); germination remote; eophylls bifid [pinnate in one species] with jagged margins.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: