| Description |
"Pseudostem large, up to 12 m high and 150 cm girth at the base,
of an intense glossy black colour throughout, or sometimes with a little green or brown in
the upper part. Sap yellowish, white or pale to deep purple. Rhizomes long,
the young suckers emerging up to 1 m from the parent stem. Shoulder dark brown or
brownish green with a very broad (c. 2 cm wide) appressed but rugose, scarious
margin. Petiole with irregular dark brown patches below and narrow horizontally
reflexed wings which are scarious in the lower part but green above ; TS
ratio 1.0. Leaf lamina green, without wax, strongly right-handed with auriculate
basal lobes [item d in illustration] ; PB ratio 6
- 8.
Peduncle
stout, glabrous, green or brown. Bunch habit variable, horizontal or slightly
ascending, often curved, moderately dense. Fruit apparently ageotropic standing out
round the stem with little tendency to curve. Basal bracts long, purplish, quickly
deciduous. Basal flowers functionally female. Pedicels long, up to 3 cms.
Young fruit green, glabrous with the ovules in two rows per loculus. Mature fruits
rich coppery orange in colour, cylindrical, between 2 - 3 times as long as broad and with
a long slender beak at the apex. Seeds black, 4 - 6 mm in diameter, angular,
vertically striolate, with a slightly depressed hilum and distinctly raised umbo.
Male peduncle descending more or less
vertically. Male bud large, almost conical, broadest about one quarter of the
distance from the base, just over twice as long as broad, strongly imbricate for about one
third of its length, dark purple with some cream at the base. Male bracts barely
lifting away from the bud, not curling back, dark shining purplish red outside, cream
inside except at the purplish tips. The male bracts are often removed by fruit bats
but otherwise two or three bracts hang limply round the bud ; the bracts are eventually
fully deciduous leaving the axis bare. Male flower with the compound tepal nearly
three times as long as the free tepal. Compound tepal white with pale yellow tips
to the lobes which are very deeply divided for sect. Australimusa. Free tepal more
or less ovate in outline, but abruptly truncated distally or slightly emarginate, with a
very short central apiculus".
(Argent 1976). |