Spreading on low shrubs or climbing; stem subfiliform, elongate, much branched, grooved and angled, glabrous except the sparse hairs at the node. Tendrils slender, elongated, simple. Leaves 3.5-10 cm long and almost equally broad, lamina broadly ovate-cordate in outline, scabrid-punctate above and beneath, scabrid hairs pointing forward on nerves and margins, palmately 3-(rarely 5-)-lobed, segments usually ovate-oblong, acute, narrow at the base, the lateral segments often with apparent mucro. Petiole 2-4 cm long; stipular bracts 7-15 mm long, more or less suborbicular, ciliate with hairs as long as the breadth of bract. Flowers minute (petals spreading, ovate-ligulate, almost free, 1.5 mm long, 1 mm broad); male flowers 5-10 at the apex of 2-4 cm long peduncles, pedicel ebracteate, 2-3 mm long; female flowers solitary on short peduncles; ovary globose, slightly beaked, 2 mm long, 1.5 mm across. Fruit globose or oblate, glabrous, c. 1.3 cm in diameter. Seeds 2, ovoid, c. 8 mm long, 5 mm broad, ovate-pyriform, plano-convex, not bordered, smooth, edges compressed.

Type: Sudan Republic, Blue Nile Province, Jebal Arashkol Kotschy 205; Pakistan, Stocks 29 (both K., Syn.).

Distribution: Tropical Africa from Northern Nigeria eastward to Sudan and southward to Mozambique, Rhodesia; also in Yemen and subcontinent Indo-Pakistan.