Vine, often creeping on the ground, yellow-pubescent on all parts, the trichomes ca 2 mm long, sometimes gland-tipped. Stipules about half encircling stem, deeply cleft with linear lobes, bearing glandular trichomes; petioles 2-8 cm long, eglandular but with glandular trichomes; blades variable, deltoid in ours, shallowly trilobate (the lobes abruptly acuminate), cordate at base, 5-8 cm long and 5-8 cm wide; palmate veins 5-7. Flowers strongly scented, solitary in leaf axils; peduncles 3-6 cm long, jointed directly beneath the flower, the bracts foliaceous, 2-3.5 cm long, 2- or 3-pinnatifid, the ultimate segments filiform, gland-tipped; sepals 5, +/- lanceolate, ca 2 cm long, white; petals 5, similar to sepals but slightly shorter; filaments of corona in several series, the longer to 1.5 cm long, purple below, the shorter ca 2 mm long; operculum erect, ca 1 mm long, denticulate. Berries inflated, ovoid, yellowish, ca 2.5 cm long, minutely apiculate at apex, subcordate at base, usually obscurely 3-sulcate and with 3 indistinct lines of dehiscence (apparently nonfunctional?); exocarp very thin; seeds numerous, ovoid-flattened, ca 5 mm long and 2.5 mm wide, slightly sculptured, black, shiny, trilobate at base, bearing at apex a slender funicle ca twice length of seed. Croat 4641,7400. Occasional, in clearings. Flowers and fruits throughout the year. In Costa Rica the species begins to flower in June (beginning of the rainy season) and flowers into the following dry season (Janzen, 1968). The species is a cosmopolitan weed native throughout the American tropics; the variety isthmia extends from Panama along the Pacific coast to Ecuador. In Panama, widespread in weedy areas; known from tropical moist forest in the Canal Zone, all along the Atlantic slope, and in Panama and Darien, from tropical dry forest in Panama, from premontane wet forest in Bocas del Toro and Chiriqui, and from tropical wet forest in Colón and Darien.