M. balsamina is a climbing annual to perennial
herbaceous plant up to 5 meters long. Its stem is thin, angular and slightly hairy. The alternately arranged leaves are divided into
petiole and leaf blade. The hairy petiole is short. The soft, thin leaf blade is up to 12 centimeters in size, heart-shaped and broadly ovate to rounded in outline. The sparsely hairy
leaf blade is
palmately divided into five to seven lobes and the leaf lobes are each multiply lobed or remotely sharp-toothed. The leaf margins are entire and often pointed on the lobe tips or teeth. The thin
tendrils are simple and long. It has pale yellow, deeply veined
flowers and round, somewhat warty, bright orange
fruits, colloquially called "apples". When ripe, the fruits burst apart, revealing numerous seeds covered with a brilliant scarlet, extremely sticky coating.
Reproductive traits A
monoecious plant, its flowers, some of which have long stalks, appear individually, laterally, each with a
bract. The single flowers are five-fold with a double
perianth. The finely hairy
calyx has five lobes. The corolla is white or yellow. The female flowers are short-stalked, the ovary is inferior and single-chambered and slightly below the calyx. The
stylus is three-branched with a divided scar per branch.
Staminodes may be present. The male flowers are longer-stalked and have five fused stamens in threes, with feathery and branching
anthers. At the bottom of the
stamens, appendages can be formed inside. The red or orange leathery berries are pointed-humped, ellipsoid and short-beaked with a length of 4.5 to 7 centimeters. When the fruit ripens, it opens with three flaps and releases the many seeds. The up to about 1 centimeter large, elliptical and brownish, sculpted seeds are each covered in a red, sticky seed coat "pulp" (a false
arillus). ==Uses==