中泰南星 zhong tai nan xing

Plants deciduous. Tuber subglobose, cream-colored, 3-4 × 5-7 cm. Cataphyll pink, with brown mottling, 1-20 cm. Leaf solitary; petiole red-brown or olive-green with transverse paler mottling, 60-80 cm, proximal 35-45 cm forming pseudostem, ca. 1.5 cm in diam. at base; leaf blade radiate; leaflets 12-14, sessile to subsessile, glaucous with slightly prominent carmine or green veins abaxially, shiny green adaxially, elliptic, 20-30 × 3-4 cm, base cuneate, margin flat or undulate, green or red, apex acuminate, often prolonged into a carmine thread to 9 cm; veins slightly impressed adaxially. Peduncle green with paler mottling, becoming red-violet toward inflorescence, shorter than petioles, 35-60 cm × 4-5 mm. Spathe tube outside pruinose, dark purple or pale olive-green with thin white stripes, inside pale carmine with white stripes, funnelform, 7-8 cm, 1.2-1.5 cm in diam. at base, 3-4.5 cm in diam. apically; throat margins straight, dark carmine; limb horizontal, outside dark purple, with very faint paler stripes, inside dark purple, pale green at base, with broad white stripes anastomosing in a central white spot at throat level, ovate, 9-10 × 5-6 cm, nearly as long as tube, apex acuminate, prolonged into a purple, filamentous tail to 20 cm. Spadix unisexual; female zone of same shape and size as male zone; ovaries dense, pale green, bottle-shaped, 1.5-2 mm in diam.; stigma sessile, penicillate, surrounded by black annulus; male zone subcylindric, 2-3 × ca. 0.6 cm; synandria loosely arranged, consisting of 2-4 anthers; anthers lilac, subsessile or borne on a white-green short stalk; thecae dehiscent by an oblong pore; pollen white. Appendix sessile, slightly exserted from spathe tube, erect, cylindric, to 7 cm × 5 mm, middle part green sometimes with carmine stripes above neuter flowers, apex white-green, rounded, even or spongy; neuter flowers upcurved, green, 3-4 mm, numerous in female spadix only. Infructescence cylindric, ca. 5 × 1.5-2.5 cm, borne on a nodding peduncle. Berries dense, red-orange with black stigmatic remains, ca. 7 × 3 mm, 1- or 2-seeded. Seeds globose, ca. 2 mm; testa cream-colored. Fl. May-Jun, fr. Oct.

Mountain forests along roadsides, sometimes growing as an epiphyte on mossy tree trunks; 1200-2500 m. S Yunnan [N Thailand].