Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Climbers, woody, rarely herbaceous, usually polygamo-dioecious.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves usually palmately 3-5-foliolate or pedately 5-7-foliolate, rarely simple. Tendrils unbranched or bifurcate, sometimes palmately branched. Alternate. Leaflets elliptic to ovate. Margins entire to coarsely serrate. Pinnately veined. Petiolate. Stipules 2.

Flowers: Inflorescence a polychasium, an umbel, or a compound cyme. Flowers 4-merous. Petals 4, spreading, free, usually hooded or galeate, sometimes corniculate. Stamens 4 short, abortive in female flowers. Ovary superior; style conspicuous or inconspicuous; stigma usually 4-divided, rarely irregularly divided. Disk well developed in male flowers, inconspicuous in female flowers.

Fruit: Berries globose; ellipsoid; or obovoid; 1-4-seeded. Seeds elliptic; obovoid-elliptic; or obtriangular; abaxial surface with a linear to orbicular chalazal knot; adaxial surface with a linear raphe; cross-section of endosperm T- or M-shaped.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: