in botany; the name of a genus of plants of the order dioica, clas pentandra. The characters are these: it produces separate male and female flowers; in the male flower the cup is a perianthium, composed of three leaves of an oval figure, expanding every way, and shorter than the flower; the flower is monopetalous, but divided into five segments, and has an open mouth; the segments are jagged, and are equal in size, and bend backwards; the stamens are five filaments of the length of the cup, standing open at their ends, and terminated by simple apices; the female flowers grow on separate plants, and have the cup and flower the same as in the male, only that the cup stands upon the germen of the pistil; this germen is oblong, and from it are propagated three reflex conic styles; the stigmae are bifid and curled; the fruit is a long and very large berry, truncated at the end, and very small at the base; it contains three cells, and has a curled future near the apex; the seeds are two; they are of an oblong figure, and flat. There is one species, the medi a.