Description :

• Erect or semiscandent shrubs or climbers
• Tendrils leaf-opposed or 0
• Leaves simple or sometimes deeply lobed or digitately 3-7-foliolate, margins variously toothed, rarely entire; stipules present
• Flowers in leaf-opposed or terminal, rarely axillary cymes with flowers in umbels on ultimate branchlets; buds conical to ovoid
• Calyx entire or 4-lobed
• Corolla dull yellow or yellow; petals 4, hooded at apex
• Disc ± adnate to ovary, thick, annular, entire or lobed
• Stamens 4; filaments short
• Style simple, subulate; stigma subcapitate
• Fruit globose, ellipsoid or ovoid
• Seed usually 1, oblong, ovoid or subspherical, often abruptly narrowed at one end and sometimes with a dorsal crest
• x = 12 (10, 11, 13, 14) (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Cissus L.
  • Linnaeus: 117 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 53 (1754)
  • Phillips: 493 (1951)
  • Wild & Drummond: 448 (1963)
  • Descoings: 78 (1968)
  • Merxmüller & Schreiber: 2 (1969)
  • Descoings: 82 (1972)
  • Verdcourt: 12 (1993)
• Cissus sect. Eucissus Planch.
  • Planchon: 471 (1887)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 200, fairly cosmopolitan in tropical and subtropical regions
• Southern Africa : Species 8, except in the Northern and Western Cape