Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Malodorous lianas or sometimes perennial herbs or shrubs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Margins usually entire. Usually palmately veined. Petioles usually present and well defined. Stipules usually absent.

Flowers: Flowers in solitary or in terminal or axillary racemes or cymes. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic or zygomorphic. Calyx usually large and petaloid, tubular below, often sigmoid or cylindrical, (1–)3(4)-lobed or unlobed, sometimes toothed. Corolla of 3 petals, small or vestigial, or absent. Stamens 4 to numerous, usually 6 or 12, in 1–2 rows, distinct or adnate to stylar column to form a gynostemium; anthers dithecal, distinct or adnate to style, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary inferior or partly so, 4–6-carpellate, with as many cells, sometimes partitions incomplete; ovules numerous, on axile or parietal placentas, anatropous.

Fruit: Fruit usually a capsules; sometimes with fleshy endocarp. Seeds numerous; with abundant oily or sometimes starchy endosperm; sometimes with a thickened or winged raphe.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: