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A climbing herb in the pumpkin family. It keeps growing from year to year. It produces stems each year. These are 6 m long. It can have hairs. The leaf blade is 8-20 cm long by 6-23 cm wide. It is broadly oval and heart shaped at the base. It is glossy green above and paler underneath. The leaves have 3-5 lobes. There are teeth along the edge. Male and female flowers are separate. The fruit are 8-10 cm long by 3 cm wide. They are smooth and glossy. They are dark green with white spots. The seeds are 9-12 mm long by 2 mm wide.
Leaf-lamina 7·5–20 × 5·5 × 23 cm., broadly ovate in outline, cordate, glossy green and minutely asperulous or scabrid above, paler and shortly and sparsely to moderately puberulous or asperulous beneath, especially on the veins, palmately 3–5-lobed; lobes triangular to elliptic, sinuate-dentate, apiculate, the central largest.
male flowers racemose; peduncle 1–22 cm. long; bracts small, 2·5–8 mm. long, lobed, dentate; pedicels 0·5–8·5 cm. long; receptacle-tube 2·5–5 cm. long, cylindrical, finely velutinous, lobes narrow, linear, acute, often glandular, 4–9 mm. long. Petals 3·5–4 × 2·7–3·2 cm., white, obovate. Anthers oblong, included, coherent.
Fruit 8–9·5 × 6·5–8 cm., subglobose, smooth, glossy, dark green with small whitish spots and also larger scattered whitish patches, especially towards the apex; fruit-stalk stout, 2–4 cm. long.
Female flowers on 2–3 cm. long peduncles; ovary c. 15 × 8 mm., ellipsoid, tomentose; receptacle-lobes and petals similar to those of male flowers.
Petioles 1·5–8 cm. long, finely and closely puberulous, sometimes also with sparse to dense longer hairs; glands prominent, patent.
Stems annual, to 6 m., sparsely to densely puberulous, sometimes also with longer hairs, scandent.
Seeds 8·5–11·5 × 5–6 × 2·0–2·4 mm., ovate-elliptic in outline, compressed, bordered.
Probracts 6–11 mm. long, narrow.
Flowers usually dioecious.
Perennial.
