Perennial, climber or twining shrub; branchlets slender, softly tomentose; leaves alternate, ovate to orbicular, apiculate, often peltate to cordate at base, densely hairy beneath; petiole equaling the leaf-blade or even longer; flowers greenish white, unisexual; male flowers axillary in branched cymes, densely tomentose; sepals 4, free; petals 4, connate, forming 4-lobed cup; stamens 4, connate, encircling the top of staminal column, anthers dehiscing transversely; female flowers in racemes, inflorescence longer than the males, crowded in the axils of leafy, imbricate bracts; sepal-1; petal-1; staminodes absent; carpel-1, stigma 3-fid or toothed; drupes red, ovoid-subglobose, pilose, persistent, style scar sub-basal; seeds curved or horse shoe shaped, compressed, margins tubercled.