Culcasia P.Beauv.

Laticifers absent. HABIT : erect, repent or climbing herbs, rooting at least from lower nodes, branches slender. LEAVES : many, often forming terminal crown in terrestrial species. PETIOLE : geniculate apically, geniculum often inconspicuous, sheath persistent, rather long. BLADE : lanceolate or oblanceolate to ovate or ovate-oblong, rarely rounded, rarely pubescent below, resin glands pellucid, linear or punctate; primary lateral veins pinnate, often forming submarginal collective vein, otherwise running into marginal vein, higher order venation reticulate. INFLORESCENCE : 1-12(-20) in each floral sympodium, internodes of floral sympodium sometimes relatively elongated. PEDUNCLE : short to relatively long. SPATHE : erect, green to whitish, boat-shaped, not or hardly constricted, convolute basally, gaping apically at anthesis, deciduous to marcescent. SPADIX : cylindric-clavate, equal to or somewhat longer than spathe, female zone usually densely flowered, rarely laxly, shorter than male zone and either contiguous with it or separated by a laxly flowered zone of sterile male flowers, male zone fertile to apex, axis often persistent in fruit. FLOWERS : unisexual, perigone absent. MALE FLOWER : 2-4-androus, stamens short, obpyramidal, truncate apically, anthers subsessile, connective thick, thecae oblong, dehiscing by short apical slit. POLLEN : inaperturate, subspheroidal, medium-sized (mean 32 µm., range 27-40 µm.), exine verrucate to rugulate or subreticulate, usually with psilate patches of variable size, rarely spinose. STERILE MALE FLOWERS : with 3-4 obpyramidal, depressed staminodia. FEMALE FLOWER : ovary depressed, 1-3-locular, ovules 1 per locule, anatropous, funicle short, placentae subbasal, stigma sessile, hemispheric-discoid, relatively large, sometimes weakly lobed. BERRY : globose to ellipsoid, 1-3-seeded, mostly red, sometimes orange to greenish-yellow, infructescence subglobose to cylindric. SEED : ovoid to ellipsoid, testa thin, smooth, brown, plumule lateral, superficial, with leaf primordia (C.liberica), endosperm absent.