Medium-sized perennial climbing herbs. Leaves simple; blade palmately lobed. Tendrils simple or usually proximally bifid. Probracts present. Flowers medium to rather large, white or yellow, dioecious. Male flowers solitary or racemose, often a long-pedicelled solitary flower and a raceme arising from the same axil; racemose flowers bracteate; bracts small to large and then usually ± hooded; receptacle-tube elongated, subcylindrical; lobes linear-lanceolate, narrow, entire; petals 5, entire, free; stamens 3, all 2-thecous, or 3, two 2-thecous, one 1-thecous; filaments free, inserted on the tube; anthers united into a head, included in the tube; connective narrow; thecae triplicate. Female flowers solitary; ovary ellipsoid, terete, ± hairy; ovules many, horizontal; receptacle-tube elongated; lobes and petals as in ♂; stigma 3-lobed. Fruit medium-sized, thin-walled, fleshy, subglobose to ellipsoid and beaked, terete, red, indehiscent. Seeds relatively small, elliptic in outline, compressed, lenticular, dark-coloured. Fig. 11, p. 80.
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