Distribution     
Native range not certain, perhaps India, long cultivated in southeastern Asia and carried by man throughout the Pacific. In the Hawaiian Islands, a Polynesian introduction on Kaua`i, O`ahu, Moloka`i, Lana`i, Maui, Hawai`i.

Habit
Deciduous herbs with numerous leafy shoots 0.75-2 m tall.

Leaves
Leaves lanceolate, 14-40 cm long, 3-8.5 cm wide, pubescent on upper surface along midrib and on lower surface, petioles 4-5 mm long, pubescent, ligules membranous, 1.5-4 cm long, entire, pubescent or glabrate, sheaths reddish, 3-6.5 cm long, pubescent.  

Flowers
Spikes variable, ovoid, obovoid, globose, ellipsoid, rhomboid, cylindrical, or somewhat fusiform, 3.5-10.5 cm long, 1.75-5.5 cm wide, peduncles 9-50 cm long, bracts green when young, becoming pale and finally red, closely imbricate, ovate, obovoid rhomboid, or broadly elliptic, 1.5-4 cm long, 1.25-4 cm wide, glabrate to pubescent, margins membranous, apex not incurved; calyx 13-17 mm long; corolla whitish to pale to dark yellow, the tube 2-3 cm long, the lobes 1.5-2.5 cm long; labellum orange to yellow, ovate, orbicular, or suborbicular, 1.2-2 cm long, 1.5-2 cm wide, apex emarginate; anther pale yellow, 8-10 mm long.  

Fruit
Fruit red, obovoid, ca. 12 mm long and 8 mm wide.  

Chromosomes
2n = 22.