Flowers usually hermaphrodite and regular. Fruit a capsule, berry or drupe. Latex sometimes present. Inflorescence consists of several male flowers and one female flower enclosed in a cup-shped involucre of 5 fused bracts. In Clematis , leaves are opposite, simple or compound, and twining.
Female flowers become a cluster of achenes, each bearing a long, plumose awn derived from the style.
Attach to host plants by haustoria. Leaves reduced to minute scales. Flowers are small, regular and bisexual. Fruit is a berry or drupe. The stems are often quadrangular in cross-section with simple, opposite, or occasionally whorled leaves.