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A pumpkin family plant. It is a long slender climber. The stems are weak. The leaves are heart shaped or divided like fingers on a hand. They are thin textured and give off a bad smell if touched. The flowers are separately male and female but in the axil of the same leaf on separate spikes. The female flowers are in short dense clusters. The fruit are oval and 1 cm long. They are densely covered with prickles.
Climbing sometimes to several m; lvs orbicular in outline, shallowly 3–5-lobed, usually with a deep basal sinus, the lobes denticulate, acuminate; pistillate peduncles eventually 5–8 cm, the staminate usually longer; staminate cor 8–10 mm wide, lobed to the middle; fr ovoid, 1.5 cm, hairy and spiny; 2n=24. Damp soil; Me. and Que. to Minn., s. to Fla. and Ariz. July, Aug.
