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Climbers, woody or herblike, hermaphroditic or polygamo-dioecious. Tendrils unbranched or bifurcate. Leaves simple or compound. Inflorescence a panicle, compound dichasium, or thyrse, leaf-opposed and tendril-bearing. Petals 4 or 5, spreading, free. Stamens 4 or 5. Disk well developed, angular, adnate to ovary, often 5-10-grooved. Style usually short and conical, with ca. 10 ridges; stigma inconspicuously expanded. Berry spheroid or elliptic, 1-4-seeded. Seeds obovoid, suborbicular, or elliptic-oblong, raphe linear, chalazal knot somewhat spatulate in shallow depression; endosperm T-shaped in cross-section. 2n = 40.
Seeds usually 4, flattened-ellipsoid, with a strongly marked longitudinal keel on one side and a median furrow or pit on the other, variously rugose.
Leaves simple, entire or lobed, or digitately 3–5-foliolate; leaflets sessile or petiolulate; stipules deltate, inconspicuous.
Inflorescences of condensed cymes with flowers in capitate heads or cymes more lax and paniculate.
Erect perennials, climbers or lianes; tendrils present, arising from the peduncle, rarely absent.
Style simple, very short; stigma not wider than the style.
Disk ± entire, clasping the ovary.
Calyx entire or ± lobed.
Petals 5.
