Name: Tropical Asian Piper
Genus: 1 Piper; ± 300 species.
Region: southeast Asia, from north to southern China, westward to the Indian Subcontinent, and eastward to New Guinea and Australia.
Taxonomy: Miquel divided the tropical Asian Piper into several genera, on characters of the presence of pedicellate fruits, floral bracts pedicellate versus sessile. But these characters are homoplasious and have evolved in parallel several times.
Plant theoryThis clade was first treated as
Botany: herbs, shrubs or climbers.Leaves: palmately or pinnately nerved; climbers exhibit strong leaf dimorphism between the monopodial, orthotropic shoots and the sympodial, plagiotropic branches; leaves on monopodial shoots are cordate or ovate, basally cordate or round, and possess sheathing petioles, whereas leaves on fertile, sympodial branches are ovate, lanceolate or elliptic, and have nonsheathing petioles.
Onflorescences: lax, erect or pendulous.
Flowers: bisexual or, if unisexual, then the plants are dioecious; male inflorescences are filiform or cylindrical; female inflorescences are filiform, cylindrical or globose.
Fruits: free or sunk into the rachis; often brightly colored; floral bracts are diverse: pedicellate, sessile, cupullate in the Muldera clade, = Schizonephos.