Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial or occasionally annual herbs.

Stems: Stems twining, sometimes winged, arising from tuberous rootstocks. Stems often with small axillary bulbils.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple or compound (palmate). Alternate or rarely opposite. Base cordate. Usually with 3–13 curved, convergent principal veins. Petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers unisexual, the plants dioecious. Perianth of staminate flowers urceolate, campanulate, or deeply divided. Stamens in staminate flowers 6, sometimes 3 represented by staminodes; filaments distinct or connate; pistillate flowers usually with 6 staminodes. Ovary inferior, 3-carpellate; staminate flowers: ovary vestigial or absent.

Fruit: Loculicidal capsules; deeply 3–lobed or 3–angled; the lobes flat; wing-like. Seeds 1–2 per cell; winged.

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