Climbing, annual or perennial, mostly glabrous vines, with forked or simple tendrils, usually digitately compound leaves and small white or greenish monoecious flowers. Calyx cup-shaped, 5-toothed. Corolla rotate, deeply 5-parted. Staminate flowers racemose or pani-cled, the stamens united into a central column; anther 1, annular in our species. Pistillate flowers solitary; ovary obliquely ovoid, beaked, 1-3-celled, with 2 ovules in each cavity; style short; stigma large, hemispheric. Fruit spiny, obliquely ovoid, beaked, at length irregularly dehiscent, few-seeded. [Greek, circle-anther.]

About 40 species, natives of America. Type species: Cyclanthera pedata Schrad.

1. Cyclanthera Dissecta (T. & G.) Am. Cut-Leaved Cyclanthera

Fig. 4013

Discanthera dissecta T. & G. Fl. N. A. 1: 697. 1840. Cyclanthera dissecta Arn. in Hook. Journ. Bot. 3: 280. 1841.

Annual; stem grooved and angular, glabrous, branching, climbing to a height of 3°-4°, or straggling. Petioles 1-2' long; leaves digitately 3-7-foliolate, the leaflets oval or oblong, usually acute at each end, ¥-2' long, rough on both sides, dentate, or somewhat lobed; staminate flowers racemose, borne on a peduncle ¥-2' long; pistillate flowers solitary, very short-peduncled; fruit narrowed at the base, slightly oblique, about 1' long, armed with slender spines.

Thickets, Kansas to Texas, Louisiana and northern Mexico. July-Sept.

1 Cyclanthera Dissecta T G Am Cut Leaved Cyclanthe 684