Kedrostis africana Cogn.

Perennial. Herbaceous climber, occasionally prostrate. Rootstock tuberous, perennial. Stems annual, slender, angular or angular-sulcate; glabrous or nearly so, much branched, up to 6 m long but usually considerably shorter. Leaves sessile to shortly petioled, herbaceous drying membranous or occasionally thicker or tougher to slightly coriaceous, glabrous and smooth to scabrid-punctulate mainly on upper surface, sometimes scabrid with distinct white scaly dots, orbicular, cordate or triangular in outline, varying from deeply pinnately or digitately dissected to occasionally (and also the first leaves formed) only pinnately or palmately lobed, 2-10 cm in diam.; the segments varying from narrow, filiform to lanceolate or elliptic or somewhat obovate to cuneiform; the ultimate lobes filiform to rather wide (up to 12 mm broad), acute, acuminate, obtuse or rounded, usually mucronate, entire or occasionally dentate the margins flat (in the thin, herbaceous leaves) or more or less recurved (in the firmer leaves which are usually also more punctate-scabrid); petioles slender, sulcate, glabrous or slightly pilose, 1-12 mm long. Tendrils simple, slender, glabrous. Flowers monoecious, minute, with a yellowish green, whitish or cream-coloured corolla, almost invariably the subumbellately racemose flowers in the same axils as the sessile or subsessile and solitary or occasionally fascicled female flowers. Male flowers: common peduncle filiform, glabrous, finely striate, few-to 12-flowered, 2-8 cm long; pedicels capillary, usually patent or erecto-patent, 2-5 mm long, usually with minute (0.5-1 mm long) bracts at the base; receptacle 0.5-1.5 mm long and 1-2 mm in diam., sepals narrowly triangular to linear or subulate, 1-2 mm long; petals finely papillose, 1-2 mm long. Female flowers: peduncles (even in fruit) not exceeding 6 mm; ovary subglobose or ovoid, constricted to shortly rostrate at the apex, glabrous. Fruit subglobose, often shortly and abruptly pointed, red when ripe, glabrous, few-seeded, 8-15 mm in diam. Seeds ovoid-oblong or ovoid, somewhat attenuate and truncate at the end; finally granulated, 4.5-6 mm long, 3.5-4.5 mm wide and 2.5-3 mm thick.

A tropical plant. It grows in hot arid places. It grows in areas with a rainfall between 50-700 mm per year. It cannot tolerate frost. It grows in stony and sandy soils. It grows between 200-2,100 m above sea level. It can grow in arid places.

Can be grown by cuttings or seedlings.