Epipremnum Schott

Robust hemi-epiphytic to lithophytic root climbers with copious trichosclereids; shoot system not differentiated into monopodial clinging and free lateral flowering sympodial axes; vigorous foraging shoots produced on loss of contact with substrate. Leaves: petiole geniculate at apex; sheath mostly degrading to fibres, or persistent; blade entire to fenestrate to pinnatifid, striate-to reticulate-veined. Inflorescences terminal on clinging shoot, solitary or clustered; spathe unconstricted, canoe-shaped, mostly thickly coriaceous, usually caducous, mostly yellowish or green, then blackening; spadix sessile to stipitate. Flowers bisexual throughout spadix, though some (distal and proximal) sometimes infertile and perhaps performing specialised roles in pollination, atepalate, tetramerous. Stamens free; filaments ribbon-like. Ovary rhomboid from above, truncate, with punctate to slit-like sessile stigmas, unilocular to incompletely 2-locular with placentas parietal or near base of partial septa; ovules 2–4 (–8). Ripe infructescence exposing seeds by transverse dehiscence (?always) of individual fruits, the tops detaching together in ±coherent plates. Seeds reniform with thickish testa, albuminous.

Epipremnum is distinguished from Rhaphidophora by the smaller number of ovules and larger, harder-coated seeds and from Scindapsus by the ovules more than one and the seed copiously albuminous. However, these distinctions appear to be breaking down as more species of these genera become better known.