Vines or climbing herbaceous perennials; stems to 3 m, 4-angled, glabrous or puberulent at nodes, smooth or sparsely aculeolate. Leaves in whorls of 4(-6); petiole 0.6-6 cm; blade drying thinly papery, lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate, 2-7 × 0.5-2.5 cm, glabrous and sparsely scaberulous, base rounded, truncate, or sometimes cordulate, margins denticulate-aculeolate to smooth, apex acuminate; principal veins 3(or 5), palmate. Inflorescences thyrsoid, paniculate, with terminal and axillary, many-flowered cymes; axes glabrous, smooth to sparsely scaberulous; bracts lanceolate to ligulate, 1-3.5 mm; pedicels 1-4 mm. Ovary ca. 0.5 mm, smooth. Corolla purplish red, greenish yellow, or white, rotate, fused basal part 0.1-0.5 mm; lobes lanceolate to lanceolate-triangular, 1.3-1.5 mm, acuminate, glabrous. Mericarp berry black, 3.5-4 mm in diam. Fl. Aug-Oct, fr. Aug-Dec.
Home