Plants perennial climbers or creepers. Stems up to 3 m long, glabrous. Leaves petiolate; petioles 0.6-4.1 cm long, lower surfacea with stiff, spreading hairs, these sometimes reduced and wartlike or surfqaces almost smooth; upper dupper surfaces galbrous or with short, stiff hairs; blades 2-10.4 cm long, 1.7-11.4 cm wide, shallowly to deeply 3(-5)-lobed, lobes broadly triangular to elliptic, margins minutely dentate, tips acute, lower surfaces usually glabrous rarely with blackish glands at the base, veins with stiff, spreading hairs, wart-like, or almost smooth near the base, upper leaf surfaces with minute hyaline pustules, veins sometimes with tine hairs; probracts 2-3 mm long; tendrils simple. Male inflorescences racemes, sometimes accompanied bu 1-2 solitary flowers; peduncles 3.2-7.7 cm long, glabrous; pedicels of flowers in racemes 0.2- 1 cm, of solitary flowers up to 3.8 cm long; bracts 1-1.5 mm long. Male flowers: perianth tubes glabrous; calyx lobes 2.5-3.5 mm long, subulate, spreading; corollas pale yellow to pale orange-yellow, 1.7-2.6 mm long, lobes 1-2 cm long; color of filament stalks, anther heads, and pollen sacs not seen. Female flowers not seen. Fruits solitary; petioles 20-33 mm long at maturity; fruits oblong-fusiform. 6.2-8 cm long, 1.8-2.3 cm in diameter, sometimes with a sterile apical tip up to 5.5 cm long, green with pale longitudinal mottling when immature, becoming orange-red to scarlet red with pale mottling at maturity; seeds 6.5-7 mm long 4.4.5 mm wide, and about 1.5 mm high, more or less symmtrically obovate, lenticular in outline.
Coccinia ogadensis is known from the Central and Eastern parts of the Somali region of Ethiopia and Central Somalia. It grows at elevations of 300-800 m in red sand and sandy loam and in limestone soils in open acacia -Commiphora woodlands. When crushed, it reportedly smells like rotten meat. It is not known whether the small comes from the flowers , the leaves, or both.