Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Herbs, shrubs, or vines, perennial, from rhizomes, usually with fusiform tubers, often with fern-like appearance.

Stems: Stems photosynthetic, erect, spreading or climbing, branched, cladophylls solitary or fasciculate, in nodes of reduced, scarious leaves.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple, small, scale-like, membranous, or sometimes spiny with hardened base, subtending cladophylls. Petioles absent. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences axillary or terminal, racemose, or umbellate, paired or solitary; racemes short. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or unisexual; perianth greenish, white, or yellowish, campanulate to rotate. Perianth of 6 tepals in 2 series, distinct or shortly connate basally, equal. Stamens 6, distinct, equal; anthers versatile, 2-locular, dehiscence introrse. Ovary superior, 3-locular, septal nectaries present; style 3–branched distally.

Fruit: Berry-like; red or purplish black; globose; often with tepals persisting at base. Seeds 1–6; black; globose to angular.

Ploidy: x = 10

Habitat:

Elevation Range: