Hapaline Schott

HABIT : very small, slender, seasonally dormant herbs, tubers small, depressed-globose. LEAVES : 1-few, usually solitary. PETIOLE : sheath short. BLADE : cordate-sagittate, sagittate or hastate, sometimes pale green or silvery variegated; primary lateral veins pinnate or mostly arising at petiole insertion, forming arching submarginal collective vein, 1-2 marginal veins also present, higher order venation reticulate. INFLORESCENCE : 1-2 in each floral sympodium, appearing with leaf. PEDUNCLE : subequal or longer than petiole, slender. SPATHE : slender, not distinctly constricted, tube very slender, persistent, tightly convolute around female flowers, blade longer, oblong-lanceolate, erect to reflexed and ± revolute at anthesis, marcescent. SPADIX : subequal or longer than spathe, slender, female zone adnate to spathe, few-flowered (2-7), ± biseriate, separated from male zone by short sterile zone, male zone subulate to cylindric, fertile to apex or with a few sterile flowers at apex or with a long, terminal appendix (H. appendiculata). FLOWERS : unisexual, perigone absent. MALE FLOWER : 3-androus, synandrium peltate, truncate, hexagonal, elongated in sense of spadix axis, shallow, stipitate, connective strongly dilated, thecae short, subglobose, remote, almost pendent from margin, dehiscing by pore. POLLEN : inaperturate, spherical, medium-sized (mean 40 µm.), exine rather densely spinose. STERILE FLOWER : lower ones very few, ± remote, apiculiform, upper ones very few, consisting of tiny, peltate synandrodes. FEMALE FLOWER : gynoecium oblong to lageniform, ovary 1-locular, ovule 1, anatropous, funicle very short, placenta parietal to subbasal (morphologically basal), style very short, stigma subcapitate. BERRY : ellipsoid to globose, style persistent, pericarp thin, 1-seeded, white. SEED : ellipsoid, testa smooth, very thin, embryo large, ellipsoid, light green, endosperm absent.