猪菜藤属 zhu cai teng shu

Herbs twining or prostrate. Leaves petiolate, base usually cordate, margin entire, angular, or lobed. Inflorescences axillary, 1- to few-flowered cymes; bracts 2, leaflike, borne well below calyx, persistent. Sepals 5, apex acute; outer 3 ovate, slightly enlarged in fruit; inner 2 much smaller. Corolla campanulate or funnelform; limb shallowly 5-lobed. Stamens included; filaments dilated basally, adnate to corolla tube, free distally, filiform; pollen not spiny. Disc ringlike. Pistil included; ovary 1-loculed or imperfectly 2-loculed apically, 4-ovuled. Style 1, filiform; stigmas 2, ovate-oblong, complanate. Capsule globose, 4-valved, pilose. Seeds 4 or fewer.

One species: tropical regions in Africa and Asia, naturalized in Jamaica.

Lower Taxon

• Hewittia malabarica (Linnaeus) Suresh