1. Ampelopsis Michx.

Plants lianas, often more or less completely monoecious. Young stems often slightly angled or ridged, green or reddish-tinged, glabrous or hairy. Older stems to 20 m or more long, gray to dark brown, often appearing somewhat warty with oval lenticels, eventually developing deeply fissured nonshredding bark, the pith white, not or only rarely chambered. Tendrils at scattered nodes, sometimes few, occasionally also in the inflorescence, branched, the tips slender. Leaf blades simple or twice pinnately or pinnately then ternately compound with 9–35 leaflets. Inflorescences usually opposite the leaves, panicles, flat-topped or dome-shaped, wider than long or slightly longer than wide, repeatedly dichotomously forked or with 3–5 umbellate branches, the flowers in small umbellate clusters at the tips of the ultimate branches. Petals 5, free, 2.0–2.8 mm long, persistent and spreading at flowering, greenish yellow. Stamens 5. Nectar disc noticeable under magnification, about half as long as the ovary, cup-shaped, the basal portion fused to the ovary, the rim free, entire or irregularly scalloped. Style often very short, sometimes persistent at fruiting. Fruits globose, often with small warty dots at maturity. Seeds 1–3 per fruit, 3.5–4.5 mm long, asymmetrically obovoid to broadly obovoid, somewhat longitudinally angled along the inner side, reddish brown to yellowish brown. About 25 species, most diverse in Asia, but also in North America, Central America.

The berries of Ampelopsis species have thin flesh and are not palatable to humans, but are a food source for birds and small mammals. The stems are sometimes used in basketry and other handcrafts.