Dioecious climbing or twining shrubs, the wood with large porous vessels. Leaves spirally arranged, entire or coarsely lobed (Mal.), generally minutely papillose-tubercled on both faces, nerves palmate to pinnate. Flowers sessile, arranged in heads or umbels; these on ± elongate, distally ± thickened peduncles, from defoliate or foliate axils; inflorescences solitary or several in lax racemes, panicles or fascicles. Calyx small, ± deeply 4-or 5-lobed. ♂ Flowers: Petals 4 or 5, united into a short or mostly elongate-filiform tube adnate to the flower axis, upper part or lobes free, valvate in bud, apex a little inflexed, patent or ± reflexed in anthesis. Stamens 4 or 5; filaments short-linear; anthers elongate-linear-oblong to (sub)sagittate, exceeding the filaments in length, dorsifixed a little above the base, introrse. Rudiment of ovary minute. ♀ Flowers: Calyx and lobes of the petals either distant from each other by the elongate flower axis, or close together, i.e. practically no flower axis present. Staminodes flattish, very short. Ovary thick-cylindric, hairy; stigma sessile, disk-shaped, its centre a little depressed. Drupe oblongoid to subovoid-ellipsoid, laterally compressed, whether or not narrowed into a stalk-like base, either sessile or on a pedicel-like flower-axis; mesocarp thin; endocarp crustaceous, rugose or shallowly la-cunose, ± manifestly verrucose inside, the warts causing small pits in the flattened ovoid seed which is surrounded by a juicy pulp; testa thin; albumen fleshy, rugulose; cotyledons elliptic, thick-foliaceous.
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