Monstera Adans.

Appressed hemiepiphytic climbers or vines; juvenile plants terrestrial with elongate internodes and mostly ovate blades, greatly modified when climbing, sometimes tightly appressed to climbed surface (shingle leaves); preadult plants with shorter internodes, usually climbing or pendent, the result of branching or reversion to preadult phase from adult foliage; adult plants usually appressed climbers with short internodes, sometimes scandent; caudices often somewhat flattened on one side, densely rooting at the nodes, usually on the flattened surface only; roots usually slender; petioles amplexicaule, sheathed 1/6 to throughout; sheath persistent or deciduous; blades membranaceous to coriaceous, mostly ovate to oblong-elliptic, often oblique and inequilateral, entire or pinnatifid, frequently fenestrate in 1-4 series per side; midrib sunken above, raised below; primary lateral veins sunken above, prominently raised and whitish below; interprimary veins straight or branched especially toward the margins; tertiary veins distinct; INFLORESCENCES much shorter than the leaves, 1-several per axil; peduncle shorter or longer than the spathe; spathe deciduous, coriaceous, caviform, orbicular to naviculiform, usually white to pinkish or yellowish; spadix sessile, white to yellow, cylindroid, usually sterile at the base. Flowers densely aggregated in several spirals, perfect, naked, protogynous; stamens 4, extrorse, the pollen emerging in viscid threads; pistils oblong, prismatic, truncate at apex; style conical, the stigma linear, curved or straight. INFRUCTESCENCE green, white, yellow or orange, the stylar portion of the berries deciduous to expose the seeds; seeds globose to oblong, the raphe S-shaped by curvature of the seed in development; testa brown and soft, the embryo macropodial, green or blue. Species ca. 60,