Balloon Vine
Cardiospermum halicacabum
Summary 7
Cardiospermum halicacabum, known as the balloon plant or love in a puff, is a climbing plant widely distributed in tropical and subtropical Africa and Asia. Often found as a weed along roads and rivers, it has been examined for antidiarrhoeal as well as homoeopathic medicinal properties.
Description 8
Climbers, herbaceous, 1-1.5 m. Stems and branches green, 5- or 6-sulcate, slender, glabrous or sparsely hairy. Leaves biternate, triangular in outline; petioles 3-4 cm; leaflets subsessile; blades thinly papery, margin sparsely serrate or pinnately parted, abaxially sparsely villous on midvein and lateral veins, adaxially subglabrous or sparsely pilosulose; terminal blade obliquely lanceolate or subrhombic, 3-8 × 1.5-2.5 cm, apex acuminate; lateral ones slightly smaller, ovate or narrowly elliptic. Panicles few flowered, ca. as long as or slightly longer than
leaves; peduncles straight, 4-8 cm, tendrils spiralled. Sepals 4, ciliate, outer 2 ovate, 8-10 mm, inner 2 narrowly elliptic, ca. 2 × as long as outer ones. Petals milky-white, obovate. Stamens (male flowers) ca. as long as or slightly longer than petals; filaments sparsely long villous. Ovary (female flowers) obovoid or sometimes subglobose, pubescent. Capsules brown, pearlike, turbinate-obtriangular or sometimes nearly ellipsoid, 1.5-3 × 2-4 cm, pubescent. Seeds black, shiny, ca. 5 mm in diam.; hilum green when fresh, white when dry, cordate. Fl. summer-autumn, fr. autumn-early winter.
General habitat 9
"Moist deciduous forests, also in scrub jungles"
Sources and Credits
- (c) Gerrit Davidse, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA), http://images.mobot.org/tropicosthumbnails/TropicosImages2/100151000/100151702.jpg
- (c) Mark Hyde, Bart Wursten and Petra Ballings, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), https://www.zimbabweflora.co.zw/speciesdata/images/13/137330-2.jpg
- (c) Valter Jacinto, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA), http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6156/6204105982_625435691f.jpg
- (c) Gerrit Davidse, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA), http://images.mobot.org/tropicosthumbnails/TropicosImages2/100151000/100151703.jpg
- (c) "<a href=""http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/WLI/"">USDA NRCS Wetland Science Institute</a>.", some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA), https://plants.usda.gov/gallery/large/caha13_002_lvp.jpg
- (c) Marco Schmidt, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA), http://www.westafricanplants.senckenberg.de/root/index.php?page_id=14&id=276
- Adapted by Kate Wagner from a work by (c) Wikipedia, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiospermum_halicacabum
- (c) Missouri Botanical Garden, 4344 Shaw Boulevard, St. Louis, MO, 63110 USA, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA), http://eol.org/data_objects/4971857
- (c) India Biodiversity Portal, some rights reserved (CC BY), http://eol.org/data_objects/26333049
More Info
- iNat taxon page
- African Plants - a photo guide
- Atlas of Living Australia
- Biodiversity Heritage Library
- BOLD Systems BIN search
- Catalogo de Plantas y Líquenes de Colombia
- eFloras.org
- Flora Digital de Portugal
- Flora of North America (beta)
- Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)
- Go Botany
- HOSTS - a Database of the World's Lepidopteran Hostplants
- IPNI (with links to POWO, WFO, and BHL)
- NatureServe Explorer 2.0
- New Zealand Plant Conservation Network
- SEINet Symbiota portals
- Tropicos
- USDA PLANTS database
- World Flora Online
- 日本のレッドデータ検索システム
- 植物和名−学名インデックス YList
