Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Giant perennial herbs 1–3 m tall.

Stems: Stems decumbent, 2–6 m long, ca. 12–15 cm in diameter.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades suborbicular, 8–20 dm long and nearly as wide. Blades peltate, basal sinus u–shaped. Upper surfaces sparsely hirsute, becoming glabrate; lower surfaces hirsute on the raised reticulate veins; dark green on upper surface; lower surfaces pale green. Margins 9–11-lobed and coarsely dentate, the teeth ca. 2–4 mm long. Palmately veined. Petioles 3–6 dm long, brownish tomentose, becoming glabrate except at base, sometimes also with scattered pustules. Stipules absent but with large axillary scales often called stipules, obovate, strongly erose, 4–5 cm long, pilose toward edges.

Flowers: Flowers in numerous spikes arranged along a common central axis 3–6 dm long, each spike subtended by a narrowly lanceolate to spatulate bract ca. 15–18 mm long. Flowers very small, bisexual (perfect). Calyx 2(3), very small, sometimes only rudimentary, equal or unequal, valvate, often cuspidate, ± caducous, deltate, 0.3–1 mm long, apex lacerate. Corolla of (0)2, greenish(?), obovate, strongly concave, 1–1.4 mm long, glabrous to pilose, margins ciliate to lacerate, usually caducous. Stamens 1–2; filaments very short; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary inferior, urceolate to depressed–ovoid, 2-carpellate, 1-celled; ovule 1, pendulous from ovary apex, anatropous; styles 2, terminal, subulate to filiform; stigmas papillate.

Fruit: Fruit drupaceous or nut-like; red to purple; globose; 3–angled; ca. 3–4 mm in diameter. Seeds ca. 2 mm long; somewhat compressed; 4–angled; 1 of the angles obscure; 1 inconspicuous; the other 2 prominent; embryo embedded in copious oily endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occurring on wet; steep slopes and cliffs primarily in cloud swept wet forest.

Elevation Range: 950–1,520 m.