S. NAZIMUDDIN AND S. SHAHARYAR H. NAQVI
Ctenopsis Naud.
Annual, prostrate or scandent, monoecious. Tendrils simple. Leaves digitately 5-7-lobed; suborbicular, with stipuliform bract at petiole base, ciliate, fimbriate or dentate. Flowers very small, yellow; male flowers racemose on short peduncle. Calyx shortly obconic and campanulate; corolla rotate, petals 5-partite, ovate-ligulate, spreading. Stamens 3, two 2-thecous, one 1-thecous, thecae erect, short ovoid, didymous, connective not produced, filaments inserted on the calyx tube, free, remote, very short. Pistillode absent. Female flowers solitary, in the same axil, as the males. Peduncles short. Calyx and corolla as in the male, ovary subglobose, smooth, ovules few, horizontal. Style columnar, basal disk absent. Stigmas 2(3). Fruit small fleshy berry, subreniform, globose or obliquely subquadrate, red; seeds few, much compressed, or boat-shaped.
A genus of two species, one tropical African extending to Pakistan and India, the other confined to peninsular India and Ceylon.
Excluded Species
Ctenolepis garcinii (Burm. f.) C.B. Clarke in Hook. f., Fl. Brit. Ind. 2: 629. 1879.
