Twining vines with thick rhizomes or a large, tuberlike swelling. Herbous or wooded vines.
Distribution
Widely distributed in the tropics and subtropics, a few in temperate regions.
Floral characters
Inflorescences determinate, but sometimes appearing indetreminate, axillary.Usually unisexual, radial. Tepals 6, distinct to slightly connate, imbricate. Stamens 6, filaments distinct to slightly connate, adnate to the baes of the tepals. Carpels 3, connate; ovary inferior with axile placentation. Stigmas 3, minute to slightly bilobed. Ovules 2 to numerous in each locule.
Leaf characters
Alternate to opposite, simple, entire, sometimes palmately lobed or rarely compound, cordiate.
Stipules
absent
Fruit characters
Winged, loculicidal capsule, samara, berry.
Glands
absent
Hairs
present, simple to stellate.
Latex
absent
Uses
Ipomoea batatas, called Yams (edible).
Chemical characters
Steroidal saponins and alcaloids.
Distribution maps
(online von http://www.mobot.org/MOBOT/research/APweb/ . Dort zitiert wie unter jedem Diagramm vermerkt):
Dioscorea (Dioscoreaceae)
map: see Meusel et al. 1965; Fl. N. Am. 26: 2002; FloraBase 2004
Dioscoreaceae
Madagascar, Peninsula India, Ceylon, Peninsula Malaysia
