Stems often tangled among themselves, 3-20 dm. Leaves: petiole 3-25 mm; blade ovate, triangular, or rhombic-orbiculate, 15-60 × 10-45 mm, base obtuse, truncate, or cordate, margins shallowly sinuate, apex usually acute or acuminate, sometimes obtuse or round. Inflorescences: peduncle 4-6 cm; umbel 4-11-flowered; pedicel 3-15 mm. Perianths pale greenish yellow, 3-4 mm, glabrous or with few minute hairs externally near margin of limb. Fruits usually reflexed at tip of pedicel, 7-10 × 1.5-2 mm.

Flowering late spring-mid fall. Dry, gravelly areas, often among boulders or shrubs, roadsides; (0-)800-1800 m; Ariz., N.Mex., Tex.; Mexico; West Indies; Central America; South America.

Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Vine

General: Suffrutescent or shrubby, much branched perennial with long, weak, slender, pale reclining branches.

Leaves: Opposite, scattered, glabrous 1.5-6 cm long, ovate to ovate-deltoid, typically cordate to truncate at base, attenuate at apex or sometimes acute, often apiculate.

Flowers: Terminal inflorescence or axillary, flowers arranged in umbels on leafy or bracteate cymose branches; umbels 5-10 rayed, forked, rays lanceolate-attenuate, sparsely hairy, caducous; greenish perianth, rotate-spreading, 3-4 mm broad, stamens 2, much exserted.

Fruits: Greenish anthocarp, narrowly clavate, finely ribbed, glabrous or occasionally finely hirsutulose, 10-12 mm long.

Ecology: Found in canyons and thickets; 2,000-4,500 ft (610-1372 m); flowers September-April.

Distribution: s AZ, NM, s TX; south to s MEX, and in S. Amer.

Notes: A sometimes robust perennial with a shrubby habit, reaching from 1 to even 2 m tall; the leaves are opposite and trangular to heart shaped; inflorescences are of many delicate and greenish white flowers arising on stalks from the same point (umbel).

Ethnobotany: Unknown

Etymology: Boerhavia is for Hermann Boerhaave (1663-1738) a Dutch botanist, scandens means climbing.

Synonyms: Commicarpus scandens

Editor: SBuckley 2010, FSCoburn 2015