Polygamous, tendrilled lianas or scandent shrubs; stems terete to prominently ribbed, the wood simple or composite, usually with 3 or more peripheral bundles, these solitary or paired, terete or flattened, regular or irregular; tendrils axillary or peduncular, forked, often bracteate at the fork, the arms coiled like a watch-spring. Leaves 3-foliolate, biternate or decompound-ternate, with minute stipules or none, often pellucid-punctate. Thyrses arranged in axillary or terminal racemes or panicles. Flowers small, irregular; sepals 4 or 5, persistent, 2 sometimes united, the outer ones smaller; petals 4, with a complex crested scale within, the scale usually 1/2-% as long as the petal, the scales of the anterior petals larger than those of the lateral petals, the crest usually orange or yellow and variously shaped, bear-ing within a deflexed, usually barbed appendage which often extends over the disc glands at the base, the lateral inner margins of the deflexed appendages usually coherent by means of their intertwining trichomes; disc glands 2-4, white or yellow, the lateral ones smaller or reduced altogether; stamens 8, unequal, the 3 adjacent to the anterior petals smaller, the staminal cluster eccentric, the fila-ments connate at the base; ovary sessile or short-stipitate, 3-celled, the style 3-lobed, the ovules solitary, affixed below the middle of the cell. Fruits usually ovate-cordate, consisting of 3 samaras, broadly winged toward the base, finally separating from a central axis; seeds sometimes short-arillate with crustaceous testa; embryo incurved, the cotyledons plicate.
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Lianas or vines of forest canopy, open disturbed areas, or savanna vegetations. Cross section with a single or multiple vascular cylinders, often producing milky sap. Stipules minute or small, early deciduous or persistent. Leaves alternate, trifoliolate, pinnately 5-foliolate, biternate, or triternate, or seldom bipinnate. Thyrses axillary or distal, racemose or paniculate, with flowers on lateral cincinni. Flowers zygomorphic; calyx 4-5-merous, the sepals distinct, or the two anterior ones connate to different degrees into a larger sepal; petals 4, distinct with a hood-shaped appendage, larger in postrior petals; disc unilateral, 2-to 4-lobed; stamens 8, the filaments of unequal length, the anthers dorsifixed; ovary 3-locular, the locules with a single ovule. Fruit a schizocarp, splitting into three samaroid mericarps, with a proximal wing. Seeds lenticular to globose, not arillate.
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