Smooth perennial herbs with tuberous or corn-like rootstocks and mostly basal, large showy leaves; flowers small and numerously crowded on a spadix which is generally surrounded or subtended by a simple showy leaf-like organ called a spathe.

A very numerous family found mostly in the tropics and represented in our region by but a single species.

A stemless marsh plant with large leaves 1—4 feet long, 3—18 inches wide, oblong or oblong-lanceolate, acute, narrowed below into a short petiole. Flowers appearing before the leaves; spathe yellow with a broad acute blade 2—6 inches long, narrowed below to a sheathing petiole 3—10 inches long; spadix 2—4 inches long, densely flowered, on a stout peduncle 8 inches or more long.

In wet and marshy spots through the Selkirks. Very abundant near Bear Creek Station on the railway, flowering in early spring.