A slender twiner. Stems puberulous. Petioles 0.5-2.5 cm long. Leaf-blade tripartite, the median lobe elliptic-lanceolate, 2-4 cm long, c. 1 cm wide, 1-nerved from the base, the laterals asymmetrically lanceolate, slightly smaller, 2-nerved from the base; lobes acute, less often subacute or obtuse, minutely glandular-serrate to subentire; blade wide-cordate at the base, sparingly puberulous above and beneath. Stipules narrowly lanceolate, 4-5 mm long, sparingly puberulous. Stipels 1 mm long. Inflorescences usually axillary; peduncles 2 cm long; one of a pair of bracts usually trilobate, the other elobate, both triangular-ovate in outline, 1-2 cm long, 6-7 mm wide, acute, serrulate, rounded at the base, 7--nerved from the base, puberulous, yellowish-green; bract-stipules resembling the leaf-stipules; male peduncles 2 mm long; male involucre c. 5 mm across, ± glabrous; aborted flower-mass flattened; female bracts 2-3 mm long, ± entire, ciliate. Male flowers: pedicels 2-3 mm long; sepals elliptic-ovate, 1.5 x 1 mm, becoming reflexed, minutely puberulous without, glabrous within, greenish-yellow; stamina] column 1.5 mm high; anthers minute, yellow. Female flowers: pedicels c. 1 mm long, extending in fruit; sepals 6(-l0), pinnatifid, elliptic in outline, 2 mm long, extending to 1 cm in fruit, with c. 4 pairs of linear gland-tipped lateral lobes, strigose-hirsute, the hairs urticating; disc 0; ovary 1 mm diam., densely pubescent; styles 5 mm long, dilated and excavated at the apex, glabrous. Fruits trilobate, 4-5 mm x 5-7 mm, pubescent, brown. Seeds spherical, 3 mm diam., grey, brown-mottled and streaked.

Fl. Per.: Sept. (sterile Jan.).

Holotype: Sudan, Kordofan, Jebel Arashkol, Kotschy 84 (B). Isotypes (G!; K!; P!).

Distribution: Throughout Tropical Africa; S. Arabia; Pakistan; India (Gujarat).

Climbing on Salvadora and Leptadenia growing in clay sand and in calcareous rocky valleys and on limestone hillsides, fairly common locally; altitude not recorded, but probably c. 330'/100 m.