Description
Key Characters:
Growth Form:
Herbaceous vines.
Stems:
Roots:
Leaves:
Leaves simple.
Alternate.
Blades conspicuously wider than long, somewhat reniform to 2–lobed sometimes 'U' shaped, 1.5–5 cm long, 4–9 cm wide.
Surfaces glabrous, with orbicular laminar nectaries ca. 1 mm in diameter between main veins on lower surface.
Margins entire to crenulate.
Veins conspicuously reticulate.
Petiolate.
Stipules setaceous, 3–8 mm long, deciduous.
Flowers:
Flowers paired.
Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic, campanulate, 3–4 cm in diameter. Hypanthium 0.2–0.4 cm long; corona yellow, banded with purple, filamentous, 1–1.5 cm long.
Calyx of 5 sepals, bluish white.
Corolla of 5 petals, alternate with the sepals, bluish white.
Stamens 5(–8), on an androgynophore; anthers dithecal, versatile, opening by longitudinal slits.
Ovary superior, stipitate, placentation parietal; ovules anatropous.
Fruit:
Berries purple at maturity; globose; 1–1.5 cm in diameter.
Seeds numerous; Seed coat reticulate; with an aromatic; succulent; edible aril; embryo embedded in copious oily; soft fleshy endosperm.
Ploidy:
2n = 12*
Habitat:
Abandoned lots and sugar cane fields.
Elevation Range:
ca. 135 m.