Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Climbing annual or perennial herbs with a thickened woody base.

Stems: Stems up to many m long, glabrate.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades broadly ovate with a basal sinus, blades 8–24 cm long, 10–25 cm wide. Surfaces hispid. Margins shallowly 3–7-lobed, the lobes broadly triangular. Petioles 5–15 cm long. Stipules absent; tendrils in the stipular position 3–5–branched.

Flowers: Staminate flowers clustered along rachis of racemes 8–15 cm long, peduncles 2–6 cm long; pistillate flowers on peduncles 1–5 cm long. Flowers usually unisexual (and the plants monoecious or dioecious), actinomorphic. Calyx of staminate flowers 5-lobed; sepals inserted on hypanthium. Corolla of staminate flowers: corolla of 5 petals, corolla green, 12–15 mm in diameter, connate at base, inserted on hypanthium alternate with calyx lobes, the limb often rotate. Stamens in staminate flower 3; filaments connate into a column; anthers distinct, 2 of them dithecal, the other monothecal, cells flexuous; anthers opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary inferior, of a single carpel or 3-carpellate with carpels connate into a single 3-lobed cell; ovule 1, placentation parietal, pendulous; stigma 3-lobed.

Fruit: Fruit green; pear–shaped; 8–15 cm long; 5–10 cm in diameter; longitudinally grooved; sometimes sparsely and softly spiny; indehiscent or dehiscent. Seeds 1 per fruit; large; ovate; 5–10 cm long; 3–5 cm in diameter; seed coat woody; endosperm absent.

Ploidy: 2n = 24; 26; 28

Habitat: Now sparingly naturalized usually near sites of habitation at lower elevations.

Elevation Range: