General Information |
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Distribution | Six species, tropical and subtropical eastern Australia.
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Habit
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Medium-sized, solitary-stemmed, unarmed palms, caudex gray, straight, ringed with leaf scars.
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Leaves
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Leaves pinnate, with strongly elongate, tubular sheaths forming a conspicuous crownshaft, abscissing cleanly, leaflets in a single plane, midrib twisting slightly, the blade turning edgewise; seedling leaf bifid.
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Flowers
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Inflorescences infrafoliar, these expanding after leaves fall, primary bracts 2, of similar length, deciduous one after the other, peduncles short, panicles many-branched, the rachillae pendulous at first, becoming more open and divaricate. Flowers unisexual (and the plants monoecious), usually in triads of a central female flower, with a male flower on either side, in male flowers expanding in advance of female flowers, sepals small, 3-keeled, obtuse and imbricate, petals 3, ovate to oblong, subacute and valvate, bearing 8-24 stamens and a pistillode, anthers versatile and dorsifixed; female flowers more or less rounded, seated in a calyx-like cupule of bracts, calyx and corolla imbricate and of similar length, perianth accrescent after anthesis, staminodia sometimes present, ovary 3-angled, 1-celled, stigmas 3.
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Fruit
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Fruit coral pink or red at maturity, globose-oblong or ellipsoid, exocarp soft, becoming thin and readily separating when dry, exposing a layer or covering of strong longitudinal fibers.
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Seeds
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Seed 1, not furrowed, raphe a band of loose or embedded fibers, albumen prominently ruminate.
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Contributor
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David Lorence & W. L. Wagner
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