Family: Araceae
Family description:
Perennial, usually glabrous herbs, with underground rhizomes or tubers. Leaves all basal, usually with distinct petiole, and often with more or less reticulate venation. Flowers small, often unisexual, arranged in a compact spike (spadix), subtended and usually partially enfolded by a large, petaloid or leave-like bract (spathe), the axis of the spadix often prolonged beyond the flower-bearing zone as a fleshy, usually coloured appendix. In monoecious plants the female flowers are at or near the base of the spadix, the male flowers above them; vestigial, sterile flowers, usually in the form of filiform papillae, may also be present. Periath of 4-6 free, sepaloid segments, or (more usually) absent.Stamens 1-6, rarely more. Ovary superior or nude, sometimes sunk in the axis of the spadix, 1- or 3-locular; stigma usually sessile or subsessile. Fruit a berry, sometimes rather dry.A large family, centered in the wet tropics, were it includes many epiphytes and climbers. The majority of European species have more or less flowers and are pollinated by flies.
Measurements of the scape include the spadix and spathe.