Description: Annual or perennial herbs, dioecious or monoecious. Tendrils simple or 2–5-branched.
Leaves compound or simple and palmately lobed. Male flowers in racemes, female flowers solitary. Hypanthium narrowly funnel-shaped. Corolla 5-lobed, mostly white. Stamens 3, two 2-locular, one 1-locular, loculi flexuous. Ovary ovoid; ovules many, horizontal.
Fruit ellipsoid, fleshy; seeds ovate, compressed.
Distribution and occurrence: World: 40 species, Asia to Western Pacific. Australia: 6 species (2 species possibly endemic), Qld, N.S.W., N.T., W.A.
Text by G. J. Harden
Taxon concept:
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