Plants perennial, monoecious, sometimes temporarily dioecious, trailing or climbing; stems <annual>, usually glabrous, sometimes scabrous; roots tuberous, globose to fusiform; tendrils unbranched or 2–3-branched. Leaves: <bracts absent>; blade suborbiculate, shallowly to deeply palmately 5(–7)-lobed, lobes deltate to oblong-ovate or ovate, margins entire or remotely and coarsely dentate-lobulate, surfaces eglandular. Inflorescences: staminate flowers 5–100 in axillary panicles or racemoid panicles; pistillate flowers solitary, in same axils as staminate; <peduncles erect at apex>; bracts absent. Flowers: hypanthium campanulate to cupulate; sepals 5, linear or filiform to subulate or deltate, sometimes vestigial; petals 5, connate 1/2 length, usually white, cream-yellow, or greenish yellow, rarely greenish, triangular to ovate or oblong-ovate, (1–)2.5–10(–12) mm, glandular-villous adaxially, corolla campanulate, cupulate, or rotate. Staminate flowers: stamens 3(–4); filaments inserted near hypanthium base, connate, sometimes vestigial; thecae not fused into ring, forming a head, arched-flexuous, connective broad; pistillodes absent. Pistillate flowers: ovary (2–)4(–8)-locular, ovoid to globose; ovules 1–4 per locule; style 1, short to nearly vestigial; stigmas 1, discoid to subglobose head; staminodes present or absent. Fruits capsular, yellowish green to orange-yellow, often green-striped, globose to subglobose or depressed-globose, short-ellipsoid, ovoid, or oblong, <symmetric>, often short-beaked, dry, thin-walled, moderately to sparsely or densely echinate (smooth to sparsely echinate or muriculate in M. watsonii), irregularly dehiscent by splitting or dropping of beak. Seeds 1–16(–24), orbicular to suborbicular, ellipsoid, oblong, ovoid, obovoid, or oblanceoloid, slightly compressed, or globose to subglobose, not compressed, not arillate, margins usually not differentiated, slightly grooved in several species, surface smooth. x = 16.
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