Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Climbing annual herbs.

Stems: Stems up to several m long, scabrous, soon glabrate.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades broadly reniform with a broad basal sinus, 10–12 cm long, 10–13 cm wide, shallowly to deeply palmately 5–9–lobed, the lobes narrowly triangular to narrowly ovate or obovate. Apex acute, mucronate. Surfaces hispid, sparsely so on upper surface. Margins dentate or lobulate. Petioles 3–7 cm long. Stipules absent; tendrils in the stipular position 3–4–branched.

Flowers: Flowers in staminate flowers in panicles on peduncles 10–18 cm long, subglabrous, pedicels glandular pubescent; pistillate flowers 20–30 per head, sessile on peduncles 1.2–2.6 cm long. Flowers usually unisexual (and the plants monoecious or dioecious), actinomorphic. Calyx of 5 sepals, inserted on hypanthium. Corolla of staminate flowers greenish white, 5-lobed, 3–6 mm in diameter, petals inserted on hypanthium alternate with calyx lobes, usually connate at base, the limb often rotate; Corolla of pistillate flowers 5-lobed, perianth usually smaller than in staminate flowers. Stamens in staminate flowers (2)3(–5), inserted at base of hypanthium; filaments connate into a column; anthers curved or flexuous, coherent and twisted in a head, opening by longitudinal slits; pistillate flowers: staminodes absent. Ovary inferior (pistillate flowers), of a single carpel or 3-carpellate with carpels connate into a single 3-lobed cell; ovule 1, placentation parietal; stigma capitate.

Fruit: Fruit brown; fusiform; 10–12 mm long; 5–7 mm in diameter; compressed or angled at base; puberulent; long–beaked; indehiscent. Seeds 1 per fruit; ovate; endosperm absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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