Pinellia Ten.

Perennial herbs, seasonally dormant, with cormlike, subglobose tuber or cylindrical rhizome and tubercles usually formed around the main tuber, on the tuber around the petioles, or at the rhizome ends; with bulbils usually at lower, middle or upper portion of petioles, sometimes at both petiole and the base of the leaf blade. Leaves 1-5; petioles green, usually unspotted, sometimes spotted, sheath fairly long, very short or nearly absent; bulbils present or absent; leaf blades simply cordate, ovate, oblong, deeply trifid, or trisect, or pedatisect; leaflets oblong-elliptic to ovate-oblong; primary lateral veins of the leaf blade or of each leaflet pinnate, forming a submarginal collective vein, 1-2 distinct marginal veins also present, higher order venation reticulate. Inflorescence solitary, appearing with the leaves; peduncle green, shorter or slightly longer than petiole; spathe persistent, slightly to strongly constricted between tube and blade, except in Pinellia pedatisecta; tube convolute, narrowly ellipsoid to ovate, almost closed within by a transverse septum, except in P. pedatisecta, gaping at base; limb of spathe oblong-elliptic, boat-shaped, gaping, fornicate, green to purple, twice ormore as long as tube; spadix much longer than spathe, female zone adnate to spathe, separated from the male zone by the spathe septum, except in P. pedatisecta, and by the short, free, naked portion of spadix axis; male zone cylindric, short; terminal sterile appendix smooth, elongate-subulate, often sigmoid, long-exserted from spathe. Flowers unisexual, perigone absent. Male flowers 1-2(-4)-androus, stamens sometimes united congenitally in pairs or groups of four, short, laterally compressed; anthers sessile, connective slender, thecae ellipsoid, 2-celled, dehiscing by apical slit, rarely each pollen sac opening by a pore; pollen extruded in amorphous mass, inaperturate, spherical or subspheroidal, small to medium-sized, exine spinulose. Female flowers with ovary ovoid to ovoid-oblong, 1-locular; ovule 1, orthotropous, funicle very short; placentation basal, stylar region attenuate, stigma small, hemispheric to discoid. Berries oblong-ovoid, green, yellowish green or whitish; seeds obnapiform to ellipsoid, testa irregularly verrucose-rugulose or smooth; embryo axile, elongate, or very small and subglobose, endosperm copious.