Flora of North America species comparison

climbing with tendril-like petioles and leaf rachises, 3-6 m.

blade pinnately 3- or 5-foliolate;

leaflets ovate or broadly lanceolate to narrowly deltate, to 6.5 × 3.5 cm, margins entire;

surfaces abaxially glabrous or very sparingly appressed-strigose on major veins.

blade undivided or 1-3-pinnately or -ternately compound;

leaf or leaflets cordate to orbiculate, oblong, lanceolate, or oblanceolate, lobed or unlobed, margins entire or toothed.

axillary, 3-12-flowered cymes or compound cymes or paniculate with cymose subunits.

axillary and/or terminal, 1-many-flowered cymes or panicles or flowers solitary or in fascicles, to 15 cm;

bracts present and leaflike or ± scalelike or absent, not forming involucre.

bisexual, often some unisexual (staminate) in same inflorescence;

pedicel 1-3.5 cm, slender;

sepals wide-spreading, not recurved, white, linear or elliptic to lanceolate or narrowly obovate, 0.9-2.2 cm, length ca. 2-3 times width, abaxially tomentose along margins, adaxially glabrous;

stamens ca. 50;

filaments glabrous;

staminodes absent;

pistils 5-10.

bisexual or unisexual, radially symmetric;

sepals not persistent in fruit, 4, white, blue, violet, red, yellow, or greenish, plane, ovate to obovate or linear, 6-60 mm;

petals absent;

sometimes anther-bearing staminodes between sepals and stamens;

stamens many;

filaments filiform to flattened;

pistils 5-150, simple;

ovule 1 per pistil;

beak present.

achenes, aggregate, sessile, lenticular, nearly terete, or flattened-ellipsoid, sides not prominently veined;

beak terminal, straight or curved, 12-110 mm.

broad, flat, conspicuously rimmed, minutely appressed-silky, sometimes sparsely so;

beak 2-6 cm.

, ± woody, sometimes only at base, climbing by means of tendril-like petioles and leaf rachises, or erect, herbaceous perennials, from elongate rhizomes.

= 8.