Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Giant fleshy perennial herbs.

Stems: Stems decumbent, 2–6 m long, ca. 12–15 cm in diameter.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades cordate–reniform to suborbicular, palmately 7–11–lobed. Blades ± peltate, basal sinus u–shaped. Blades often rugose. Margins irregularly denticulate. Palmately veined. Long-petiolate. Stipules absent but with large axillary scales often called stipules, these simple to divided.

Flowers: Flowers in spikes, racemes, or sometimes panicles, usually 1 per stem, each one without subtending bracts. Flowers very small, bisexual (perfect) or unisexual (and then plants monoecious or dioecious), when plants monoecious, staminate flowers usually above pistillate ones, sometimes with bisexual (perfect) flowers in between. Calyx 2(3), very small, sometimes only rudimentary, equal or unequal, valvate, often cuspidate, ± caducous, ovate to deltate or oblong–lanceolate, apex lacerate. Corolla of (0)2, usually 1–2 mm long, oblong to spatulate, slightly longer than sepals, glabrous to pilose, usually caducous; always absent in pistillate flowers. Stamens 1–2; filaments very short; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary inferior, urceolate to depressed–ovoid, 2-carpellate, 1-celled; ovule 1, pendulous from ovary apex, anatropous; styles 2, terminal, subulate to filiform; stigmas papillate.

Fruit: Fruit drupaceous or nut-like; yellow; red; orange; or purple; fleshy; globose; 3–angled. Seeds small; embryo embedded in copious oily endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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