Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Vines.

Stems: Stems twining, herbaceous, up to 3 m or more long, pubescent with 3–branched hairs to glabrate.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades ovate to broadly ovate, 3–6 cm long. Apex acuminate to obtuse. Base cordate. Surfaces glabrous, blades membranous. Margins entire. Petioles often longer than blades. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers few to numerous in dense, umbelliform cymes, usually only 1–2 open at a time, peduncles longer than leaves, pedicels usually ca. 10 mm long, sometimes longer. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic, 5-merous. Calyx of 5 sepals, distinct, imbricate, chartaceous, unequal, variable in shape, pubescent, the outer 2 ovate, 7–10 mm long, acuminate, middle sepal falcate, inner 2 sepals ovate to lanceolate, 4–5 mm long; persistent, occasionally accrescent. Corolla of 5 fused petals; petals blue or sometimes pale blue, campanulate to subrotate, ca. 2 cm long, the midpetaline bands glabrous; nectary disk small or absent. Stamens 5, distinct; filaments inserted on corolla tube base alternate with corolla lobes, Stamens and styles included (exserted in 1 species); anthers dithecal, usually linear or oblong, extrorse. Ovary superior, 2-celled; ovules 4, placentation basal or basal-axile, anatropous, glabrous or pubescent; style 1, filiform, simple or bifid; stigmas 2, ellipsoid or oblong and flattened; stigma capitate or bilobed or, when stigmas 2, then linear, ellipsoid, or globose.

Fruit: Capsules tan to brown; 2–celled; 4–valved or 8–valved; globose; ca. 4 mm in diameter; glabrous; dehiscent by valves; transversely; or irregularly; or indehiscent and berry-like or nut-like. Seeds 1–4; brown; 2–3 mm long; glabrous; endosperm absent or scanty.

Ploidy: 2n = 18; 20; 40

Habitat: Naturalized in disturbed areas.

Elevation Range: