Habit***: mostly trees with unbranched "woody" trunks; mostly monoecious or dioecious
Leaves***: alternate, sheathing, often in dense terminal rosettes, mostly extremely large and palmately or pinnately lobed or pinnately compound
Flowers:in various arrangements but always subtended by 1 or more sheathing bracts (called a spathe)
Tepals: 6; similar in color, texture
Stamens: mostly 6
Gynoecium:of 3 carpels, distinct or connate; ovary superior with 1-3 locules and 1 basal or axile ovule/locule
Fruit: a fleshy (date) or fiberous drupe (coconut)
Diversity: 100 genera/3000 species;
Distribution: mostly tropical; 1 in AZ and S. CA
Economics: edible products coconut, dates, palm oil (bad for the heart); palm hearts (apical meristem of 1 species--obviously kills the plant....some countries cultivate e.g., Costa Rica others collect wild palms with detrimental effects).
Phoenix dactylifera