Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Somewhat succulent annual or perennial herbs with watery, acrid sap.

Stems: Stems prostrate to scandent.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate or the lowermost opposite. Blades peltate, sometimes palmately lobed. Petioles twining. Stipules absent or present, occasionally present only in seedling stage.

Flowers: Flowers solitary in the leaf axils. Flowers bisexual (perfect), strongly zygomorphic. Calyx of 5 sepals; sepals imbricate, the dorsal one produced into a nectariferous spur. Corolla of 5 petals, imbricate, clawed, the upper 3 usually differing in shape and larger than the other 2, these rarely absent. Stamens 8, in 2 whorls of 4, declined; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 3-carpellate, with as many lobes and cells, placentation apical axile; ovules 1 per cell, pendulous, anatropous; style 1; stigmas 3, linear.

Fruit: Fruit separating into drupaceous or nut-like mericarps from the central axis. Seeds 1 per mericarp; with a large; straight embryo; endosperm absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: