Shrubs or undershrubs, often twining, monoecious. Leaves alternate, 3 - 5-lobed or 3 - 5-
foliolate, usually palmately 3 - 7-nerved at base. Inflorescences axillary, sessile or peduncled
racemes or heads, unisexual or bisexual and often mixed with sterile deformed flowers; involucre
consisting of 2, often large, coloured, entire or 3-fid bract, with a whorl of small outer ones at
their base; upper and inner floral bracts male, 3 or more-flowered, lower and outer bracts female;
petals and disc absent. Male flowers: pedicels articulate; calyx 4 – 7-lobed; sepals valvate;
petals absent; stamens (9 -) 20 – 40 (- 90), on a convex receptacle; filaments free or connate;
anthers erect, often didymous with contiguous parallel thecae, basifixed, extrorse; pollen grains
tricolpate; pistillode absent. Female flowers: sepals 5 - 12, imbricate, usually pinnately fimbriate
or lacerate, gland-tipped, enlarged and accrescent in fruit; ovary pubescent, 3 or 4-loculed;
ovule 1 in each locule; styles connate into a fleshy slender or stout column, with an obtuse
dilated, lobed or cupular stigma. Fruits capsular, lobed, enclosed in calyx; endocarp hard; seeds
globose or ellipsoid, ecarunculate; endosperm fleshy; cotyledons broad and flat.
Tropical America, Africa and Asia, majority in America, few in Africa and two in Asia, ca
110 species; 4 species in India.
Literature.
CHAVAN, A. R. & S. J. BEDI (1962). Dalechampia scandens L. var. cordofana
(Hochst.) Muell.-Arg. – a new record for India. Curr. Sci. 31: 115. RAGHAVAN, R. S. & B. G. KULKARNI
(1980). A new species of Dalechampia (Euphorbiaceae) from peninsular India. Kew Bull. 35: 323 – 325,
f. 1.
KEY TO THE SPECIES
1a. Leaves compound, 3-foliolate with 3 sessile leaflets
3a. Lobes of leaves linear-lanceolate, 13 – 17 x 2 – 2.3 cm; sepals of female flowers neither
pinnatifid-fimbriate nor with bulbous-based long hairs but with stipitate glands
