Botanical Survey of India | Flora of India

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Climbing shrubs; tendrils branched, usually with adhesive discs at tips. Leaves 3-5-foliolate, digitate, long petioled; leaflets subsessile to petiolulate. Inflorescences leaf-opposed or terminal, pedunculate, corymbose cymes. Flowers bisexual, greenish to reddish brown. Calyx cupular, truncate or obscurely 5-lobed. Petals 5, free, concave. Stamens 5. Disc thin, obscure, fused with ovary. Style short, stout; stigma subcapitate, small. Berries subglobose, dark blue to black, 1-4 -seeded. Seeds obovate to obovate-suborbicular; adaxial surface keeled, angular with two narrow parallel infolds; abaxial surface convex with a rounded or elliptic chalazal knot.

In tropical and temperate regions of eastern Asia and North America, but mainly centred in Asia occurring at high altitudes in the Himalayas and hills of Peninsular India; ca 15 species, 2 in India.



KEY TO THE SPECIES


1a. Leaves 3-foliolate; petals with a linear 2-fid appendage at apex 1. Parthenocissus semicordata
b. Leaves (3-) 4-5-foliolate; petals without linear 2-fid appendage 2. Parthenocissus thomsonii


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