Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Monoecious or dioecious, climbing or trailing annual or perennial herbs.

Stems: Usually scabrid with short rigid hairs, sometimes hairs multicellular or glandular.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades usually palmately 5–7–lobed. Petiolate. Stipules absent; tendrils in the stipular position unbranched or 2–branched.

Flowers: Staminate flowers usually solitary on a bracteate scape; pistillate flowers usually solitary on a bracteate scape. Flowers usually unisexual (and the plants monoecious or dioecious), actinomorphic. Calyx of staminate flowers 5-lobed; sepals inserted on hypanthium. Corolla of staminate flowers with 5 petals, usually yellow, distinct, 1–3 with incurved scales at base, inserted on hypanthium alternate with calyx lobes, usually connate at base, the limb often rotate. Staminate flowers: Stamens usually 3, inserted toward base of hypanthium; filaments distinct, broad; anthers distinct or coherent, 2 of them dithecal, the other monothecal, cells curved or flexuous; pistillate flowers: staminodes absent or 3; anthers opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary inferior, of a single carpel or 3-carpellate with carpels connate into a single 3-lobed cell; ovules numerous, placentation parietal; stigmas 3, 2-lobed. Staminate flowers usually solitary on a bracteate scape.

Fruit: Fruit ovoid; ellipsoid; or spindle–shaped; usually ridged or warty; dehiscent irregularly as a 3–valved fleshy capsules or indehiscent. Seeds few to numerous; ovate; usually sculptured; endosperm absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: