Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Terrestrial or epiphytic, tufted, rhizomatous perennial herbs, pubescence of hairs and unique inflated scales, these usually giving plant a silvery or rarely golden appearance, often deciduous.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. 3-ranked. Blades linear to sword–shaped, usually keeled. Margins entire. Veins parallel numerous. Sheaths broad, closed. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in simple or sometimes compound racemes arranged in terminal panicles on simple, leafless peduncles, racemes subtended by a foliaceous bract, bracts subtending each flower membranous, usually adnate to the short pedicel, staminate flowers usually larger than pistillate ones. Flowers unisexual (and the plants dioecious). Tepals 6, distinct or connate at base, deltate. Stamens 6, introrse, in pistillate flowers reduced and with flat, empty anthers. Ovary superior, 1–3(4)-carpellate, 1-celled or 3(4)-celled, nonfunctional in staminate flowers, placentation parietal or axile; ovules 4–15, reduced in staminate flowers; style short and thick; stigmas 3, well–separated or confluent, with 3 slitlike nectaries below and between the stigmatic surfaces.

Fruit: Berries. Seeds black; +/- glossy.

Ploidy:

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