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Description
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Trees with candelabrum-like branching; roots adventituous, spiny; stem with almost annular leaf scars. Leaves with acute or attenuate apex, armed with small prickles on margins, midrib beneath and sometimes on upper pleats on upper leaf surface; leaf-base half-amplexicaul; midrib keeled beneath; secondary veins numerous. Inflorescence terminal, capitate or spicate; bracts with prickles on margins, the outer/proximal ones leaf-like and green, the inner/distal ones boat-shaped and coloured; flowers sessile, without a perianth. Male flowers in spicately arranged spadices, fragrant; stamens many, the filaments free or connate, with abundant pollen. Female flowers in spicate or racemosely arranged bracteate spadices, or in a solitary spadix, without staminodes; ovaries free or connate, each with a single ovule; placenta sub-basal but parietal. Fruit woody or drupaceous, the carpels with a ± free stigma-remnant (“pileus”); carpel with a single ovary, a thin and glabrous pericarp, a fibrous, spongy mesocarp and a thin and woody to thick and bony endocarp. Seed solitary, erect, enclosed in a hard endocarp; placenta lateral, slightly fibrous; endosperm firm.
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