Plants annual (sometimes short-lived perennial), monoecious, sprawling, trailing, or climbing; stems <annual>, glabrate; taprooted or roots slender-fibrous; tendrils unbranched. Leaves: blade hastate, 4–5-angular, or suborbiculate, shallowly to deeply palmately 3(–5)-lobed, lobes triangular or ovate to linear-oblong, central lobe usually longest, margins entire, surfaces eglandular. Inflorescences: staminate flowers (1–)2(–3) in axillary racemes or racemoid panicles; pistillate flowers solitary in same axils as staminate, irregularly produced; <peduncles erect at apex>; bracts absent. Flowers: hypanthium cupulate; sepals 5, barely differentiated as apiculae; petals 5, distinct or nearly so, white, triangular to ovate or narrowly oblong-triangular with acute apices, 1–1.5[–3] mm, glabrous, corolla rotate to shallowly cupulate. Staminate flowers: stamens 3–5 (appearing 1–3 from connation); filaments inserted at hypanthium base, connate; thecae connate, forming a head but not fused into ring, horseshoe-shaped, twisted-contorted, connective broad; pistillodes absent. Pistillate flowers: ovary 1-locular, broadly fusiform-rostrate; ovules 1(–2) per locule; styles 1–3, columnar; stigmas 1, depressed-globose to hemispheric, sometimes 2-lobed; staminodes absent. Fruits capsular, light tan, obovoid to suborbicular, gibbous, slightly compressed, beaked, dry, thin-walled, sparsely short-echinate or subaculeate, spinules thick-based, antrorsely upturned, irregularly dehiscent. Seeds 1(–2), subcylindric-clavate to obdeltoid, compressed, not arillate, margins not differentiated, surface muriculate to warty.
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