| Description |
Pseudostems up to 10 m tall and 80 cm in
girth, predominantly of a rich brown colour in the lower part, brown or non-waxy green
above. Sap variable, usually bright violet or purple but occasionally pale pink or
cream. Rhizomes short ; suckers arising more or less vertically from the ground and
plants often forming dense clumps with many pseudostems. Shoulder non-waxy, green,
commonly with a narrow appressed non-scarious black margin. Petiole pale
yellowish-green, not or slightly waxy in the upper part, margins usually turned inwards
over the canal ; TS ratio 0.6. Leaf lamina bright green non-waxy
above paler and very waxy below. Leaf base right-handed and rounded [ ] ; PB ratio 3 - 4.5.
Peduncle
glabrous green, the bunch hanging vertically downwards moderately to extremely lax.
Hands of fruit more or less ageotropic standing out or hanging at an angle. Basal
bracts long, lingulate, brown or green, shiny, deciduous or often at least partly
persistent. Basal flowers functionally female but often with staminodes.
Pedicels short c. 1 cm long. Young fruit pale green, glabrous, with the ovules in
two rows per loculus. Mature fruit rich orange in colour, indehiscent, cylindrical,
about three times as long as broad, blunt or bottle-nosed. Seeds very irregular, 6 -
7 mm in diameter, characteristically broader than deep, hilum depressed, umbo obsolete to
prominent.
Male
peduncle descending vertically downwards, often becoming very long (3 m). Male bud
imbricate, slender, from 3 - 4 times as long as broad. Occurring in the two colour
forms : shiny brown or shiny green ; and, in New Ireland, with purple streaks and tips to
the bracts. Male bracts shiny, coloured similarly to the male bud but paler on the
adaxial surface, lifting to approximately a horizontal position to display the flowers and
varying from tardily but completely deciduous to completely persistent. Male flower
with the compound tepal nearly half as long again as the free tepal. Compound tepal
cream sometimes with yellow tips to the lobes; free tepal translucent white, concave,
ovate with a short broad acumen and no subapical wrinkle. Chromosome number 2n = 20.
(Argent
1976). |