Vines or vinelike caulescent herbs , biennial, perhaps also annual, from taproots. Stems developing in 2d year, climbing, usually simple. Leaves cauline, compound, petiolate; blade with 3-5 orders of leaflets and lobes; margins entire; surfaces glabrous; distal petiolules and reduced leaflets twining and tendril-like. Inflorescences axillary, cymose-paniculate, multifloral. Flowers bilaterally symmetric about each of 2 perpendicular planes; sepals caducous, peltate with attachment near base; corolla persistent, compressed-urceolate, becoming spongy; outer petals connate except at apex, base saccate, apex with erect or reflexed, ovate to deltate lobe; inner petals similar but with apical lobes connate over stigma; filaments basally connate and adnate to petals; ovary linear or narrowly oblong; style persistent; stigma ± 2-lobed. Capsules dehiscent, 2-valved. Seeds ca. 6, elaiosome absent. The Asian members of the genus usually are considered to be a distinct species, Adlumia asiatica Ohwi.

Sep scale-like; cor bilaterally symmetrical, narrowly flattened-ovoid, subcordate at base; pet all connate about half their length, the outer constricted above to form an ovate appendage, the inner narrow, dilated at the summit into a transversely oval appendage; cor persistent after anthesis with little change of color, becoming spongy, enclosing the slender, 2-valved capsule; handsome biennial vine, climbing by the upper part of the rachis of the pinnate-ternatively decompound lvs; fls pearly- pink, in axillary panicles. 2, the other in Korea.

Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.

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