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. x`x` 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: