Iodes Blume

Dioecious climbing shrubs or lianas. Branchlets hairy, generally bearing shortly bifid tendrils at or closely to the nodes (but not axillary!). Leaves decussate, entire, apiculate by a somewhat projecting midrib, penninerved, with ± appressed and strigose and/or softer, erect or obliquely spreading coarse hairs on midrib, nerves, veins and veinlets, and sometimes besides with a tomentum of very short fine substellate hairs which covers the intervenium beneath. Inflorescences in peduncled cymes which may be combined to panicles, axillary, supra-axillary or a little lateral from the nodes, sometimes terminal, solitary, the ♂ ones often elongate and many-flowered, the ♀ ones generally shorter and rather few-flowered; lower peduncles often sterile and becoming tendrils. Flowers small, white to cream or yellowish, fragrant. Pedicels articulate with the calyx and often dilated distally; bracts and bracteoles minute. Calyx cup-shaped, 4-or 5-lobed halfway or up to ¾ of its total length (Malesia), persistent in ♀. Petals 4 or 5, or sometimes wanting in ♀, valvate in bud, generally connate at base only, rarely and only in ♂ connate to ½ to ¾ of their length into a tube, only the reflexed lobes free, a little keeled inside, tips sometimes narrowed and inflexed already in bud, persistent in ♀. ♂ Flowers: Stamens (3-)4 or 5; filaments very short and fixed either to the base of the (then shortly connate) petals or to the end of the corolla tube between the lobes, or elongate and fixed to the base of the corolla tube; anther cells almost basifixed, introrse. Ovary rudimentary. ♀ Flowers: Staminodes sometimes present. Ovary sessile; stigma sessile, discoid, cut on one side, or faintly 2-5-lobed. Drupe ovoid-ellipsoid or oblong-obovoid (Malesia), or almond-like, generally laterally compressed and longitudinally grooved or crested; exocarp thin, fleshy, yellow to red; endocarp crustaceous to thin-woody, irregularly ribbed or reticulately lacunose, or warty outside, smooth inside. Seed 1, albuminous; cotyledons large, foliaceous.