Glabrous, climbing herbs, with milky juice. Leaves alternate, petiolate,
broadly cordate, entire or lobed, palmately 3 - 7-nerved, membranous or
chartaceous, exstipulate. Inflorescence axillary branched cymes; branches
secund. Flowers minute, regular, bisexual or polygamous, ebracteate. Calyx
deeply 5-lobed, lobes imbricate, persistent or not. Petals 5, caducous,
sympetalus, infundibulifonn, lobes spreading, imbricate, thin. Stamens 5, inserted
on the corolla tube and alternate with the lobes; filaments very short, glabrous,
as long as the anthers; anthers oblong, dorsifixed, dehiscing through longitudinal
slits; pollen grains tricolporate. Disc absent. Ovary oblong-ovoid, 1-loculed;
styles 2, dissimilar, one elongated and columner and persistent in fruit, the
other short, with capitate stigma; ovules 2, pendulous from the apex of the
cavity or one of them aborted. Fruit indehiscent, obovate-oblong to globose,
compressed, emarginate, 2-winged samara; wings striolate. Seeds pendulous,
linear, grooved; testa thin; embryo very small, at the apex of granular, fleshy
endosperm.
South East Asia, New Guinea to Australia; 1 genus and 3 species, 1 species in India.
Literature. BULLOCK, A.A. (1957) Nomenclature. Notes. Kew Bull. 12: 356 & (1962). 15: 392. SLEUMER, H. (1972) Cardiopteridaceae. Fl. Thailand 2(2): 93 - 94.
South East Asia, New Guinea to Australia; 1 genus and 3 species, 1 species in India.
Literature. BULLOCK, A.A. (1957) Nomenclature. Notes. Kew Bull. 12: 356 & (1962). 15: 392. SLEUMER, H. (1972) Cardiopteridaceae. Fl. Thailand 2(2): 93 - 94.
