Climber, 3-6 m long, glabrescent or pale brown hairy, leafy stem 3-5 mm diam.; dioecious. Probract elliptic or linear, 2-5 mm long, glands present. Tendrils unbranched or 2-branched. Leaves: petiole (3-)5-12 cm long; blade (brown) or green on drying, membranous or chartaceous, simple, unlobed, or shallowly or deeply 3-7-lobed to 1/3(-2/3) deep, or 3-5-angular, in outline subcircular or broadly ovate, 10-22 by 8-20 cm, often scabrous, especially above, short hairy or glabrescent beneath, glands few to several, scattered but usually close to the insertion of the petiole, 0.5-1(-2) mm diam., margin entire, or sparsely minutely dentate or sinuate; veins 5(-7), straight or arching. Male raceme usually with co-axillary a solitary male flower or a straw-like appendage, brown hairy, hairs 1-2 mm long, peduncle 5-16 cm long, c. 2 mm thick; rachis not thickened, 5-10 cm long, 5-10-flowered; bracts ovate or (narrowly) obovate, 4-10 by 3-5 mm, acute, margin entire or finely dentate, glands present. Male flowers: pedicel in the raceme c. 5 mm long and caducous, in solitary flower c. 75 mm long and persisting as a straw-like appendage; receptacle-tube 35-80 mm long, at throat 8-12 mm wide; sepals narrowly triangular, 4-5 mm long, 1-2 mm wide at base, margin entire; petals obovate or rhomboid, 10-25 mm long, threads c. 10 mm long; androecium not seen. Female flowers: mature flowers not known; ovary finely hairy, (narrowly) ellipsoid; sepals as in male. Fruit ripening evenly red, (sub)globose, (narrowly) ellipsoid or pyriform, 10-20 by 5-9.5 cm, glabrous or sparsely hairy; exocarp woody and smooth or leathery and wrinkled, pericarp carnose, dry pericarp (2-)5-10 mm thick; pulp orange-red or yellow; fruiting pedicel 1.5-3.5 cm long, 4-8 mm thick. Seeds pale or dark brown, compressed, narrowly elliptic or ± parallel-sided, 12-17 by 4-6(-7) by 2 mm, notched at one or both ends, margin faint, edge entire or faintly undulate.
Home