Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Woody climbers.

Stems: Stems conspicuously ringed by persistent leaf scars.

Roots: With clasping, often flattened, sometimes long and wiry adventitious roots that wrap around whatever the plant is climbing on.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, spiraled 3-ranked. Blades linear–ensiform to elliptic, ovate, or obovate, midrib distinct, usually prickly on lower surface near apex but rarely in lower. Apex usually acuminate-caudate or gradually attenuate. Base clasping and with distinct, membranous, greenish, purplish, or translucent auricles. Surfaces glabrous. Margins usually prickly at least near apex, apical pleats inconspicuous or absent, never prickly. Parallel, longitudinal veins numerous, parallel, connected by perpendicular commissures to form a reticulate pattern. Sessile, clasping. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences terminal or on specialized leafless shoots consisting of usually 2–5 simple spadices, these umbelliform or rarely racemose, enclosed at first by colored, caducous spathes. Flowers unisexual (plants dioecious). Calyx (sepals) absent. Corolla (petals) absent. Staminate spikes composed entirely of densely crowded solitary stamens, each with a microscopically scabrid slender filament and a basifixed anther. Ovary superior; ovules numerous in each carpel; stigmas 2 or more, distinct or sometimes coherent, staminodes sometimes present at base of ovary. Pistillate spikes with densely congested.

Fruit: Berries crowded; each with a ± firm to rigid apex. Seeds numerous; in vertical rows; pendulous; narrowly ovoid to subcylindrical or ellipsoid–falcate; usually 1–2.5 mm long at maturity; the surface reticulate.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: