Annual or perennial, monoecious or dioecious, climbers or trailers. Tendrils simple or bifid. Leaves simple, palmately lobed or 3-9 pedately foliate, margin mucronate-dentate or lobulate-dentate or undulated, remotely denticulate. Flowers small or large, yellow or rarely white. Peduncle mostly with large foliaceous bracts. Male flowers solitary, corymbose, racemose or umbellate; female flowers solitary. Calyx tube closed at bottom by 2-3 incurved oblong scales, lobes ovate-lanceolate, entire. Corolla rotate or broadly campanulate, deeply 5-partite, lobes not fimbriate, obovate or oblong or petals free. Stamens 3, rarely 2, inserted at the mouth of the calyx tube, one 1-thecous, others 2-thecous, filaments short, free, anthers coherent at first, ultimately free, pistillode absent or glandular. Female perianths as in male. Staminode absent or glandular. Ovary oblong or fusiform, rostrate, minutely apiculate-excrescent. Ovules many, usually horizontal. Fruit oblong-fusiform, cylindric, baccate, tuberculate or muriculate, indehiscent or dehiscent by 3-valves or irregularly exposing the seeds enveloped in scarlet pulp. Seeds turgid or flattened, smooth or sculptured, grooved at the margins.