Lianes or climbing shrubs. Tendrils absent. Branchlets often zig-zag. Leaves alternate, petiolate; blades serrulate or nearly entire, elliptic, usually rounded at base. Stipules minute, subulate, caducous. Flowers 5-merous, perfect, half-epigynous, usually in very densely crowded divaricate axillary cymes, or sometimes the leaves so reduced and the upper branches so crowded that these smaller inflorescences are borne in thyrses or panicles, or very rarely the flowers solitary in the axils. Sepals deltoid. Petals usually clawed and the body concave. Ovary 2-celled. Fruit dry, samara-like, with a basal nearly spherical body and an elongate terminal wing. Seeds one.
Worldwide: about 35 species tropical Australasia, with one species each in Africa and Madagascar. Malawi: 1 taxon. |
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