Botanical Survey of India | Flora of India

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Climbing herbs; stem and branches wiry, grooved, tendrillar. Leaves alternate, exstipulate, biternate; leaflets coarsely dentate. Flowers polygamo-dioecious, ca 0.5 - 0.8 mm across, atoping coiled tendrils, in axillary racemes or corymbs. Sepals 4 in two pairs; outer small; inner large. Petals 4 in two pairs; upper pair with a suprabasal scale; lower with an inflexed appendage. Disc with 2 glands. Stamens 8; filaments free or connate below, of unequal lengths. Ovary sessile or subsessile, 3-loculed. Fruit an inflated, membranous, trigonous, 3-celled, loculicidal1y 3-valved capsule. Seeds globose usually with hilum at base.

Tropical America and Africa; ca 12 species, 2 in India.

Literature. MATTHEW, K.M. (1983). Flora of Tamil Nadu Camatic 1: 291-292.



KEY TO THE SPECIES


1a. Capsules pyriform, winged at the angles; seeds with large heart-shaped hilum 2. Cardiospermum halicacabum
b. Capsules subglobose, ovate when young, not winged; seeds with small orbicular hilum 1. Cardiospermum canescens


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