A twining or prostrate herb. Stems slender, to 3 m long, with rather long, curled, more or less appressed to patent hairs, especially at the nodes, afterwards glabrescent, sometimes already glabrous in youth; prostrate stems often rooting both at the nodes and internodes. Leaves usually ovate or broad-ovate, rarely narrow-ovate to oblong in outline, more rarely nearly kidney-shaped, 2½-12 by 1½-10 cm, broadly cordate or rarely more or less sagittate at the base, acuminate or gradually attenuate at the apex, with obtuse or acute, sometimes slightly retuse, mucronulate top; in the kidney-shaped leaves with a broadly rounded apex; leaf-margin entire or coarsely crenate to dentate, sometimes 3-lobed; surfaces glabrous or pilose on the nerves beneath or occasionally on both sides, or pilose on both sides over the whole surface; petiole shorter than or as long as the blade, 1½-6(-10) cm, appressed-pilose, rarely minutely tuberculate. Peduncles axillary, with short curled hairs, or glabrous, 2½-10(-16) cm, cymosely branched at the apex. Pedicels 3-6 mm long, appressed-pilose. Bracts minute, caducous. Flower-buds ovoid to globose, obtuse. Sepals thinly coriaceous with scarious margin, slightly unequal, concave, broadly obovate to orbicular, emarginate and mostly mucronulate at the apex, outer ones 4-7 mm, inner ones 6-8 mm long (in poorly developed specimens sometimes only ca 4 mm), outer more or less pilose or sometimes glabrous, inner glabrous or nearly so, all slightly enlarged in fruit. Corolla campanulate to funnel-shaped, 1½-2 cm long, glabrous, yellow; limb slightly 5-lobed, lobes shallowly emarginate and mucronulate. Filaments hairy at the base. Ovary glabrous. Capsule depressed-globose, coarsely wrinkled in dry specimens, glabrous, ca 7 mm high, 2-celled. Seeds 4-1, dark grey or brownish puber-ulent, trigonous, or globose when only one seed has been developed.
In thickets, on hedges, in grasslands, in teak-forests, along railroads, on dikes of rice-fields, often on moist soil, from sea-level to 250 m.
Home