Daemonorops geniculata (Griff.) Mart.

Moderate-sized, usually solitary rather short rattan. Stems usually less than 5 m long, but occasionally to 20 m, often flowering when merely 1–2 m long, without sheaths to 2 cm diam., with sheaths to 3.5 cm diam., internodes to 10 cm long, usually less. Leaves cirrate; sheaths dark shiny green with abundant grey-brown indumentum, armed with oblique almost diagonal partial whorls of reflexed flattened black spines to 4 cm long mixed with fine spines to 5 mm long, the spine bases confluent in low collars persisting after spines disintegrate in old sheaths, spines around the leaf sheath mouth obliquely upward pointing, to 10 cm long, often paler than those on the body of the sheath; knee a low rounded swelling, usually unarmed and hence conspicuous; ocrea absent; petiole to 1 m long, usually armed with large horizontal pale straw-coloured spines to 7 cm long, these tending to trap leaf litter, distally armed with scattered groups of reflexed spines; rachis 1–1.5 m; cirrus 0.4–1 m; leaflets up to 40 on each side of the rachis, usually irregularly arranged in groups of 3–10, sometimes ± regular, dark green, the largest to 35 x 2 cm. Inflorescences pendulous, to 60 cm long, the male and female superficially similar, the male branched to 3 orders, the female to 2 orders; peduncle conspicuous, to 40 cm long, armed with short lateral spines to 1.5 cm long; prophyll and peduncular bracts thin, almost papery, soon splitting and falling or disintegrating, armed with groups of very slender horse-hair like spines; male rachillae to 35 x 0.3 cm, with very densely crowded strictly distichous flowers; female rachillae to 80 x 0.4 cm. Mature fruit ± spherical, to c. 2.2 cm diam., with a short beak to 0.2 x 0.2 cm, and covered in 15–17 vertical rows of pale straw-coloured channelled scales with darker margins and usually with red flecks.   ± rounded, somewhat flattened on one side, c. 1.2 cm diam., endosperm deeply ruminate. Seedling leaf with 4–6 leaflets.