Large perennial herbs with twining annual stems arising from tubers. Leaves alternate or opposite, simple or palmately compound, cordate-sagittate or hastate, multicostate with reticulate and divergent venation, often bearing bulbils in their axils; petioles long, twisted at the base. Flowers small, in spikes or racemes, unisexual, actinomorphic. Male flowers: perianth 6-cleft; segments short, spreading, in 2 whorls; stamens 6, all antheriferous or some times only 3 bearing anthers; filaments free or united at the base, anthers small, incurved, 2-celled, dehiscing longitudinally; pistillode thick and fleshy or absent. Female flowers: perianth of 6, small, free, persistent tepas; staminodes 6,3 or absent; ovary inferior, 3-quetrous, trilocular, 2 superposed ovules suspended from axile placentas in each locule; stigmas reflexed. Fruit a 3-winged loculicidal capsule. Seeds flattened, often winged.