| General Information |
| Distribution | Native to the West Indies, but widely grown as an ornamental and now naturalized in many tropical areas.In the Hawaiian Islands,
naturalized on
Kaua`i, O`ahu, Moloka`i, Maui, Hawai`i.
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Habit
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Climbers to 3-4 m tall with slender stems, unarmed, glabrous except with simple, few-celled hairs along leaf margins, on veins of lower surface, and on corolla margins and tips, a few short glandular hairs on peduncles and pedicels.
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Leaves
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Leaves usually pinnatifid, alternate, ovate in outline, ca. 5-8 cm long, partly or completely pinnately divided to midrib into 3-9 lobes, lowest lobe often smaller, other lobes oblanceolate, short-petiolulate or broadly attached, sinuses rounded or acute, base oblique, petioles 2-4 cm long.
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Flowers
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Flowers perfect, actinomorphic, few to 50 in showy panicles, at first terminal but soon becoming lateral by sympodial growth, pedicels slender, slightly thickened toward summit, ca. 1 cm long; calyx tubular, 1-2 mm long, the lobes short and obtuse, margins subentire; corolla mauve blue, stellate, deeply divided, the tube 2-3 mm long, the limb 2-3 cm in diameter, pubescent;
stamens inserted on corolla tube; filaments 2-4 mm long; anthers oblong, stout, slightly unequal, ca. 4 mm long, opening by terminal pores; ovary glabrous or with a few glandular hairs; style 1, erect, 7-8 mm long; stigma terminal, capitate.
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Fruit
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Berries bright shiny red, succulent, globose, ca. 1 cm in diameter.
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Seeds
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Seeds reddish brown, compressed, 2-3 mm in diameter, shaggy pubescent.
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Chromosomes
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2n = 24, 32
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Notes
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Self-compatible
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