Shrub; leaves pinnate at the base and bipinnate at the apex;
staminode well developed ca.
Commonly the odd stamen is more or less reduced to a
staminode or even lacking.
In all four ginger families, the petaloid
staminode structures produce the bulk of the floral display (color, symmetry and pattern).
The identification and description of a
staminode often remains vague and arbitrary, and may overlap a whole range of different structures: It is an abstraction of something that is neither a stamen (except for those cases with clearly abortive anthers), nor a petal proper, nor any other clearly distinguishable organ.
Since the size and shape of the flower is adapted to the wasp's head, wasps would seem to be the most efficient pollinators; the
staminode may act in forcing the insect's head downward so that its chin brushes anthers or stigma (DeVos, 1983).
Female flowers: to 4-5 mm wide at anthesis; sepals 3(4), <1 mm long, triangular, red tipped; petals 3(4), lanceolate to broadly lanceolate, 1 mm long, 0.5 mm wide;
staminodes (5)6, anthers <1 mm long, sterile, filaments 1 mm long, free, inserted on edge of annular, papillose disk; ovary superior, 3-celled, style short, stigma 3-lobed, tiny; fruits subglobose, 3-angles, glabrous; exocarp 3-valved; pyrene one per fruit, covered all by a yellow-reddish pseudoaril; seeds one per fruit, rounded, 5-6 mm diameter, hilum with an irregular depression.
Inflorescences axillary or terminal, racemose, 2-33 flowered; bracts persistent or deciduous; bracteoles absent; flowers zygomorphic or asymmetric; Sepals 5, two smaller and three larger; petals 5, yellow or orange base; stamens 7, heteromorphic, 4 smaller median, subsessile, fillet erect, 2-3 abaxial larger, 2 laterals, fillets curved, twice the length of the anthers, 1 central, fillet erect, less than anther, 3-4 adaxial
staminodes, anthers dehiscent through apical sutures.
Female flowers in date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) possess tricarpellary apocarpous pistil consisting of three independent carpels, while rudimentary androecium is represented by two whorls of three
staminodes each alternately arranged in antepetalous and antesepalous position (DeMason et al., 1982).
2 mm in diameter, glabrous, stigma branches three, white, linear, 1-2 mm long, recurved;
staminodes white, laminar, triangular, ca.
Fruit obovoid to 2 cm high and 1.8 cm in diameter, often with abortive carpels visible and more or less developed, exocarp nearly smooth when fresh, red at maturity, dotted with lenticels, perianth with triangular petals,
staminodes triangular, obtuse at apex, to 2 mm long, sometimes with abortive anther.
The 13 menus allow all the major aspects of a flower to be recorded, although some more technical aspects (e.g., presence of
staminodes, short and long stamens) that are found in some floral formulae cannot be recorded.
Fully hardy and into flower around mid April, the nodding, long, 3 in petals are snow white with yellow-tipped white
staminodes (the brush like stamens in the centre).