Cyrtosperma bougainvillense A.Hay

Robust, usually solitary, herb 1-2.4 m high; rhizome often long and creeping. Leaves 2-5, sagittate; petioles prickly, green mottled white; spines slender, without conspicuously broad bases, slightly curved, scattered or tending to be arranged in short comb-like clusters; geniculus up to 14 cm long; sheath papery-fibrous, about one fifth of the length of the petiole; posterior lobes of the lamina 40-75 cm long and 20-30 cm wide, tips not acuminate; anterior lobe 35-50 cm long, to c. 60 cm wide, with spreading costae; peduncle to 2 m long, usually shorter than the petioles, prickly. Spathe blackish purple to almost white, broadly lanceolate, to 27 cm long, 6.5 cm wide, widely open to base, somewhat deflected from the spadix, not shielding it from lateral view, upper part sometimes falling adaxially over the spadix. Spadix stipitate for c. 6 mm, the insertion extended up the spathe for c. 1 cm; fertile part to 11.5 cm long, 1.6 cm wide (in flower), purplish to glaucous-blue. Flowers hexamerous; anthers dirty yellow, exserted from the tepals at male anthesis; receptive stigmas bright scarlet; ovules (1 or) 2; fruiting spadix becoming horizontal to pendulous, dark bluish to black. Fruit obpyramidal, c. 8 x 8 mm, orange, with the apex truncate. Seed tightly curved over on itself; seed-coat very thick, stony, somewhat rough.