Slender climbing or trailing herbs with annual stems. Leaves simple, palmately lobed, petiolate; stipuliform bract present at petiole base. Tendrils simple. Flowers small, yellow, monoecious or dioecious. Male flowers in pedunculate subumbellate or irregular racemes; receptacle-tube campanulate, glandular-hairy inside in upper part; lobes small, triangular-dentiform; petals ± free; stamens 3, two 2-thecous, one 1-thecous, inserted near the base of the tube; filaments free; anthers free but coherent; thecae inverted U-shaped; disk basal, depressed centrally. Female flowers usually solitary, shortly stalked; ovary ovoid-attenuate; placentas 3; ovules many, horizontal; perianth as in ♂; staminodes 0; style 1, inserted within a disk; stigma 3-lobed. Fruit baccate, globose, red, indehiscent, few-seeded. Seeds somewhat compressed, irregularly oblong or pyriform, somewhat angular at the margin; testa smooth, thick. Fig. 13.
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