Description:
Monoecious, annual, prostrate or scandent herbs. Leaves simple, palmately 5-7-lobed, petiolate, asperulose or scabrid, petiolate. Tendrils proximally 2-6-fid. Flowers unisexual. Male flowers racemose; receptacle tube broadly campanulate, lobes large, enclosing petals in bud, entire; petals 5, free, entire, yellow or whitish; stamens 5, all 1-thecous, or three 1-thecous, or two 2-thecous and one 1-thecous; filaments arising on receptacle tube, free; anthers free; connectives broad; thecae much convoluted. Female flowers solitary; ovary smooth, ribbed, tuberculate or spiny; ovules many, horizontal; stigma 3-lobed. Fruit globose to cylindric, rostrate, smooth, ribbed or spiny, dry, brownish, fibrous, dehiscent by an apical operculum. Seeds compressed, oblong-elliptic in outline.
Distribution:
Species 7, tropical, 4 in Old World; sthn trop. Afr. 2, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique; frequently cultivated.
Source:
SSTA
Classification:
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