Panama (Prestoea ensiformis)

Description

Stems cespitose or solitary, erect, 2.5-9 m tall, 3-13 cm in diam., brown or gray, often covered with persistent leaf bases, with reddish roots visible at base. Leaves 5-14, erect or arching, pinnate or rarely irregularly pinnate or simple; sheath closed for ca. ½ its length, rarely forming a crownshaft, persistent on the stem, 0.3-1 m long including a short, blunt, fibrous ligule less than 1 cm long, often reddish, fibrous at the margins distally, densely to moderately covered abaxially with appressed, white or brown peltate-lacerate scales, glabrescent, leaving punctations; petiole 0.15-1.1 m long, with scales like those of sheath, or sometimes glabrous abaxially, glabrescent; rachis 0.4-2.3 m long, with scales like those of sheath, glabrescent; pinnae 36-49 per side, regularly arranged and spreading horizontally in the same plane, subopposite to alternate, linear-lanceolate, long acuminate, with a prominent midvein and several lateral veins, with midvein essentially glabrous abaxially or with a few small ramenta, with punctations abaxially; basal pinna 36-55 x 0.5-1 cm; middle pinnae 50-82 x 3-5 cm; apical pinna 22-44 x 1.3-4.5 cm, or rarely the leaves simple or almost simple, then 1-l.l m long, 30-35 cm wide, with 1-4 separate pinnae distally and with 14-15 prominent veins each side and deeply bifid apically. Inflorescences infrafoliar or interfoliar (usually in the axils of old pcrsistent leaf sheaths), erect or arching or horizontal, straight or curved in bud; peduncle 27-93 cm long, 1-2 cm in diam., terete, densely covered with brown tomentum, glabrescent; prophyll 13-60 cm long, 4-5 cm diam., reddish, sparsely covered with whitish brown scales; peduncular bract 0.7-2.2 m long including a 2-4(-8) cm long umbo, inserted either near prophyll or halfway up the peduncle, densely covered abaxially with brown tomentum persistent; rachis 0.2-1.4 m long, white at anthesis, with similar tomentum to that of peduncle; rachillae (13-) 18-60, 35-72 cm long distally, 21-45 cm long proximally, 1-2 mm in diam. at anthesis, 2-3 mm in diam. in fruit.