Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Climbing or sprawling shrubs, rarely small trees, usually pubescent with simple, branched, or sometimes stellate hairs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Margins entire. Petiolate or sometimes subsessile. Stipules reduced to spines or absent.

Flowers: Flowers in axillary or terminal, racemose to subumbellate or paniculiform inflorescences, sometimes solitary, bracts caducous. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or sometimes staminate, zygomorphic. Calyx of 4 sepals, in 2 pairs, caducous after anthesis, the outer pair ± concave and enclosing the bud. Corolla of 4 petals, imbricate, not clawed, the lower 2 (abaxial) distinct, the upper 2 (adaxial) asymmetrical and coherent at base. Stamens usually numerous, (6–)20–200, distinct, exserted, Stamens alternate with the petals; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 1-celled with (2–)4(–10) placentas, on a gynophore usually as long as or longer than the stamens, irregularly coiled in bud; ovules numerous, ovary superior, 1-celled, placentation parietal.

Fruit: Berries globose to ellipsoid; borne on the thickened gynophore; pericarp leathery to corky. Seeds 1 to numerous; reniform; embedded in the pulp.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: