Kedrostis Medik.

Small to medium-sized climbing or trailing herbs, less often rather large woody climbers or more rarely subshrubs. Leaves usually simple, ovate-lanceolate or hastate to suborbicular in outline, ± palmately lobed, sometimes deeply dissected into narrow segments, rarely 3-foliolate with sessile leaflets. Tendrils simple, less often proximally bifid, rarely absent. Flowers small, greenish-white, greenish-yellow or yellow, monoecious or dioecious. Male flowers in few-to many-flowered lax or contracted short-to long-pedunculate racemes, more rarely in short dense fascicles, pedicellate; receptacle-tube campanulate; lobes ± small, dentiform, filiform or lanceolate; petals united at the base; stamens 5, all 1-thecous, in 2 pairs with 1 single, inserted in the mouth of the tube, or the paired stamens ± united, when completely so the stamens appearing as 3, 2 double 2-thecous, 1 single 1-thecous; filaments short; connective often apically produced; thecae lateral, short, straight or slightly arcuate; disk basal, usually concave, not distinct from base of tube. Female flowers solitary, paired or few-fasciculate, subsessile or ± shortly stalked; ovary smooth; ovules horizontal; perianth as in ♂ flower; staminodes (3–)5, inserted in mouth of tube; stigma 2(–3)-lobed; disk basal, annular, not distinct from base of tube. Fruits solitary, paired or few-fasciculate, subsessile or stalked, small to medium-sized, fleshy, baccate, red, sometimes hairy, subglobose, ovoid-rostrate, conical or fusiform, indehiscent or dehiscent by a longitudinal slit or valves. Seeds rather small, tumid, asymmetrically pyriform to subglobose, usually smooth. Fig. 23, p. 132.