Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Climbing(?) annual herbs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades 6–13 cm long, cordate to shallowly 3–lobed. Margins serrate to shallowly lobed. Petiolate. Stipules absent; tendrils in the stipular position 2–5–branched.

Flowers: Flowers in staminate flowers on pedicels 2–7 mm long. Flowers usually unisexual (and the plants monoecious or dioecious), actinomorphic. Calyx of 5 sepals, inserted on hypanthium. Corolla of staminate flowers with lobes 1.8–2 mm long, glandular, petals inserted on hypanthium alternate with calyx lobes, usually connate at base, the limb often rotate.; Corolla of pistillate flowers with lobes 0.5–0.9 mm long, 3–5(6)-lobed. Staminate flowers: Stamens (2)3(–5), inserted at base of hypanthium; filaments connate into a column; anthers curved or flexuous, more or less coherent and twisted in a head, rarely distinct and spreading, opening by longitudinal slits; pistillate flowers: staminodes absent. Ovary inferior, of a single carpel or 3-carpellate with carpels connate into a single 3-lobed cell; ovule 1, placentation parietal; stigma capitate or 2–3-lobed.

Fruit: Fruit ovoid or ellipsoid; 2.5–5 mm long; hirsute; not beaked; indehiscent. Seeds 1 per fruit; 1.8–2.6 mm long; endosperm absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: