Paullinia L.

Polygamous, tendrilled, scandent shrubs or lianas; wood simple or composite, usually with a central bundle surrounded by 3 peripheral bundles; milky sap common in stems; tendrils axillary or peduncular, forked, often bracteate at the fork, the arms coiled like a watchspring. Leaves alternate, 1-foliate, 3-, 5-, or 7-foliolate, biternate, ternate-pinnate or bipinnate; petiole and rachis often winged; leaflets membranous to coriaceous, often pellucid-punctate or-lineate, often with a network of semipellucid lactiferous canals (orange colored when observed by transmitted light), the margin usually variously toothed, the teeth often glandular; stipules often conspicuous, usually persistent. Inflorescences axillary, subterminal or at leafless nodes, usually solitary, sometimes fascicled, then at leafless nodes, basically thyrses but sometimes modified into cincinni and borne on a raceme, panicle or cyme, the cincinni subtended by bracts, the flowers with bracteoles. Flowers small, slightly zygomorphic; sepals 5 or 4 by fusion of the 2 lower sepals, imbricate, persistent, the 2 outside sepals smaller, often per-sisting in fruit; petals 4, with a complex, crested scale within, the scale consisting of an ellipsoid to rounded, petaloid, ciliate, basal part with a thickened, usually orange, variously shaped crest at the apex and a semicircular or triangular, usually densely pubescent, deflexed appendage positioned just beneath the crest on the inner surface, the anterior petal scales better developed than lateral petal scales, often coherent along their common inner margin by the entanglement of tri-chomes, the lateral petal scales with the crests reduced or absent, the basal part usually oblong, folded inward with the margins in proximity; disc annular, produced into 2 or 4 glands, usually only the anterior glands developed, these positioned beneath the anterior petals and usually protruding into the space formed by the lateral upfolded margins of the anterior petal scales and by the de-flexed appendages; stamens unequal, the anthers dehiscing laterally, the filaments often weakly basally united in staminate flowers; ovary 3-locular, sessile or short-stipitate, each cell 1-ovular, the style subulate or filiform, the stigma 3-parted, the ovules solitary, affixed below the middle of the cell. Fruits capsular, 1-3-celled, each cell 1-seeded, dehiscent into 3 valves, obovate or subglobular, sessile or stipitate, the valves septicidal, wingless, winged at the apex or winged for the total length of each cell, rarely spinose; seeds short, usually arillate with a crus-taceous testa, sometimes completely enveloped in mesocarp and apparently non-arillate; embryo usually curved.