Monoecious, annual, climbing or trailing herb, with proximally bifid tendrils. Leaves alternate, simple; stipules absent; petiole 2.5–12.5 cm long, pubescent, with a pair of tiny glands at apex; blade broadly ovate to kidney-shaped in outline, 3–33 cm × 4.5–33 cm, undivided or shortly palmately 5–9-lobed, cordate at base, shallowly sinuate-dentate, palmately veined. Flowers unisexual (rarely bisexual), solitary in leaf axils, regular, 5-merous, up to 15 cm in diameter; receptacle tube obconic-cylindrical, 1–1.5 cm long, lobes remote; petals free, white; male flowers on long pedicels 7–31 cm long, with 3 free stamens inserted on the receptacle tube, connectives broad; female flowers on short pedicels 2–10 cm long, with inferior, densely hairy ovary, stigma 3-lobed, thick, each lobe 2-lobed. Fruit a berry, very variable in size and shape, often globular, bottle- or club-shaped, up to 1 m long, white-yellow to dark green when young, sometimes whitish speckled, usually brown when mature and dried, with hard, durable rind, flesh white and soft, many-seeded. Seeds oblong, compressed, up to 2 cm long, emarginate at base, with 2 flat facial ridges, smooth, sometimes rugose, whitish to brownish.
