Parabaena Miers

Slender woody climbers. Leaves with petiole swollen and geniculate at base, lamina often cordiform or hastate, rarely deeply 3-5-lobed, margin entire or repand-dentate, palmatinerved at base, papyraceous. Inflorescences axillary, cymose or thyrsoid (a raceme or panicle of cymes). Male flowers: sepals 6, free, equal or the inner 3 broader; petals 6, often minute, sometimes with a pair of thickenings or projecting lobes on basal inner surface; synandrium usually peltate with the anthers situated around the margin usually dehiscing transversally. Female flowers occasionally functionally hermaphrodite: sepals and petals as in male; staminodes 6, minute but these occasionally developing into claviform polliniferous stamens; carpels 3, stigma reflexed, lobed or laciniate. Drupes 3, borne on subglobose carpophore; endocarp bony, dorsal and lateral surfaces variously ridged or spiny, sometimes with prominent dorsal ridge as well as basal and apical keels, condyle represented by a ventral concavity sometimes bordered by incurved spines or developed into an inflated ventral chamber, seed-cavity flattened. Seed with copious endosperm; embryo with very thin divaricate broad cotyledons and prominent radicle.