Dioecious vines; stems 5-to 10-sulcate, pilose, pubescent, or villous. Leaves simple, the blade broadly ovate to suborbicular in outline, shallowly to deeply 3-to 7-lobate, the juvenile leaves often entire or shallowly lobed, 15-30(-40) cm long, nearly as wide as long, the apex acuminate, the base cordate, the margin denticulate, chartaceous, the upper surface minutely pustulate, the upper and the lower surfaces pilose, or villous, especially on the veins; petioles 4-10 cm long, slender, striate, pilose, pubescent, or villous; tendrils simple, pilose, pubes-cent, or glabrate. Staminate flowers in axillary, usually long pedunculate, capitu-liform racemes, pilose, villous, or pubescent; peduncles to 30 cm long; flowers sessile or subsessile; calyx orange, urceolate, the outer surface pilose or pubes-cent, the inner surface papillose puberulent, the lobes ca. 2 cm long, filiform, erect or slightly spreading, pilose on the outer surface; corolla yellow, about /3 the length of the calyx lobes, the lobes lanceolate, densely papillose puberulent on both the surfaces; anthers 2, free, attached to the hypanthium wall, subsessile, the anther lanceolate, replicate at the base, ca. 6 mm long, the appendix ca. 1 mm long, smooth. Pistillate flowers solitary or several at leafless nodes on the upper part of the stem; calyx and corollas as in the staminate flowers, but gla-brous on the inner surfaces; ovary linear fusiform, ca. 1.5 cm long, pilose to glabrate, the ovules numerous, horizontal, the styles 2, connate, thick, the stigmas 2, emarginate at the apex, the inner surface papillose and grooved down the cen-ter, equalling the style column in length. Fruits green, cylindric fusiform, 4-6 cm long, 2.0-2.5 cm in diameter, glabrate, the old flowers persisting; seeds numer-ous, white, elliptic ovate, compressed, 6-9 mm long, 3-5 mm wide, the testa rugulose.
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