Woody climbers or erect or scrambling shrubs. Branchlets with straight or recurved spines or rarely unarmed, without rust-colored villosulous indumentum on terminal and axillary buds or young inflorescences. Leaves alternate, 1-foliolate or simple; petiole 0.4-2.5 cm, usually bent and/or twisted and ± swollen apically. Flowers bisexual, axillary, solitary or in few-flowered fascicles. Sepals 4 or 5, connate at base or to ca. 2/3 their length. Petals 4 or 5, imbricate in bud. Stamens 8 or 10, equal in length, distinct. Disk cup-shaped, conic, or columnar. Gynoecium 3-5-loculed, syncarpous; ovules 1 or 2 per locule; style to 4 × as long as ovary, deciduous in fruit. Fruit a berry, with copious mucilaginous pulp and without pulp vesicles; endocarp fleshy. Seeds with membranous seed coat; endosperm lacking; embryo straight; cotyledons elliptic, plano-convex; hypocotyl partly included between cotyledons.

About 15 species: S and SE Asia, N Australia; one species in China.

(Authors: Zhang Dianxiang (张奠湘); Thomas G. Hartley)