High climbing liana; stem up to 2.5 cm ø, with spiny tubercles 1 mm. Branchlets ± deeply striate, setose and minutely prickly in younger parts. Leaves broadly ovate, often 3-lobed and obscurely dentate then, apex acute, base cordate, coriaceous, glabrous and a little asperulous above, the nerves excepted, densely covered all over the undersurface with short brownish hairs and soft to the touch, and the nerves moreover set with bristle-like stiffer hairs beneath, 10-20(-25) by 7-15(-20) cm, 7 pairs of basal palmate nerves and 2-3 pairs of upper nerves, curved-ascending, slightly sunken above, prominent beneath, reticulation low though distinct on the undersurface; petiole hairy and bristly, ± torted, 3-7(-9) cm by 2-3 mm. Panicles of ♂ flowers mainly axillary, rarely from older branches, solitary or 2-3, spike-like, all over shortly greyish to brownish tomentose, 10-20 by c. 2 cm, rachis and peduncles of main branches slender, ultimate branches consisting of minute clustered, (3-)6-10-flowered pedicellate (2-5 mm) umbellules, each pedicel subtended by a filiform appressed-hispid, not properly plumed ± persistent bract (1 cm), which is partly connate to the pedicel and exserted from the mass of flower heads. Calyx segments 3-5, free, obcuneate, villous outside, hardly 0.6 mm. Petals generally 3 (rarely 4), ovate-oblong or lanceolate, slightly hairy outside only, practically free, finally re-flexed, 1-1.2 mm. Stamens 3(-4); anther cells oblong-elliptic, 0.6 mm. ♀ Flowers in oblong to spherical peduncled heads, either solitary or 2-3 per axil. Calyx segments 4, spathulate. Petals 4, short-strigose outside as are the calyx segments. Ovary strigose; style very short, 3-4-partite. Drupes in pendulous globose clusters up to 20 cm ø, each drupe ovoid-oblongoid, tapering to both ends, densely covered with appressed long soft yellowish bristles, 4.5-8 by 1.5-2.3 cm at full maturity; exocarp fleshy especially in the upper part of the drupe which bears a short beak of the former style; endocarp ligneous, ovoid-oblongoid, up to 4 by 2 by 1.5 cm, rather smooth and minutely pitted outside, faintly tubercled inside. Seed testa sparsely and shallowly pitted.
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