Trochomeria Hook.F.

Perennial tuberous-rooted climbing or trailing herbs with tendrils or small erect herbs without tendrils, often turning black when dried; stems annual. Leaves subsessile and linear to elliptic and often 3-lobed in the erect species, petiolate and broadly ovate-cordate to sagittate in outline and very variously palmately 3–5-lobed in the climbing species; a ciliate or dentate stipuliform bract often present at the petiole base. Tendrils simple. Flowers greenish-yellow, often borne on practically leafless stems, dioecious. Male flowers in pedunculate clusters, sometimes solitary; receptacle-tube elongated, cylindrical; lobes minute, dentiform; corolla ± stelliform, with the lobes ovate-triangular to linear-lanceolate, spreading or recurved, free almost to the base; stamens 3, 2 double 2-thecous, 1 single 1-thecous; filaments free, inserted on the tube; anthers united into an oblong head in the mouth of the tube; connectives narrow, shortly produced and hairy apically; thecae triplicate; pistillode usually present. Female flowers solitary; ovary ovoid to subglobose, beaked; ovules horizontal; perianth-parts as in ♂, with elongated receptacle-tube; staminodes 3, inserted on tube, ± resembling filaments of stamens of ♂ flower; stigma 3-lobed. Fruit small to medium-sized, fleshy, thin-walled, baccate, indehiscent, red. Seeds proportionally large, subglobose, ovoid or ellipsoid, ± tumid; testa smooth, hard, whitish (pitted in 4, T. stefaninii). Fig. 12, p. 86.