Climbing shrubs, often 5-10 m tall. Branchlets, petioles, and inflorescences dull yellowish-brownish stellate-tomentulose. Stipules triangular, ca. 1 mm; petiole 1.5-6 cm; leaf blade triangular-ovate, oblong-ovate, or ovate, 3.5-10 × 2.5-7 cm, papery, adaxially glabrous, abaxially stellate-pubescent, scatteredly yellowish granular-glandular, base broadly cuneate, sometimes slightly peltate, with 4 basal glands, margin entire or repand, apex acute or acuminate; basal veins 3. Male inflorescences terminal, rarely axillary, branches few or absent, 5-15 cm; bracts subulate, ca. 1.5 mm. Male flowers 2-5-fascicled; pedicel 2-4 mm; calyx lobes 3 or 4, oblong, ca. 3 mm, tomentulose; stamens 40-75. Female inflorescences 5-8 cm; bracts lanceolate, ca. 2 mm. Female flowers: pedicel 2-3 mm; sepals 4 or 5, lanceolate, 2-3 mm, tomentulose; ovary 2- or 3-locular, dull yellow tomentulose; style 3-5 mm, almost free, plumose. Fruiting pedicel 8-12 mm; capsule 2-locular, ca. 10 mm in diam., yellowish-brownish tomentulose, scattered glandular-scaly. Seeds subglobose, ca. 5 mm in diam., black. Fl. Mar-May, fr. Jun-Sep.

Thickets, forests, forest fringes, hill or mountain valleys; below 100-1000 m. Anhui, Fujian, S Gansu, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hainan, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, S Jiangxi, S Shanxi, Sichuan, Taiwan, Yunnan, Zhejiang [Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, New Guinea, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam; N Australia, Pacific islands (New Caledonia)].