Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Creeping diffuse perennial herbs, sparsely hirsute, the hairs simple or 2-branched.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades suborbicular to ovate in outline, palmately 3-lobed, 5-lobed, or 7-lobed or dissected, the lobes dentate to incised. Base truncate to subcordate. Petioles about as long or longer than blades. Stipules broadly ovate, persistent.

Flowers: Flowers solitary in the leaf axils, pedicellate; involucral bracts 3, oblanceolate to obovate-cuneate, distinct. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 5-lobed, composed of connate sepals, sometimes irregularly cleft or truncate, the lobes valvate in bud. Corolla actinomorphic to moderately zygomorphic, salmon-colored to orange, often maroon at center, drying rose or lavender, rotate, the corolla of 5 petals, obovate, distinct from each other but adnate at base to staminal column, convolute in bud. Stamens 5 to numerous, monadelphous, forming a staminal column, staminal column yellowish, terminated by filaments; anthers monothecal. Ovary superior, carpels 15-30, the carpels borne in a single whorl or rarely seemingly superposed whorls, placentation axile; ovules 2(-3) per carpel, the basal ovule separated from 1(2) upper ovules by an endoglossum; style branches as many as carpels, maroon, exceeding the staminal column; stigmas maroon, terminal, capitate.

Fruit: Schizocarp; mericarps blackish; oblong in lateral view; lower 1/2 laterally and dorsally rugose-striate; indehiscent; upper 1/2 smooth-walled; hirsute; bivalved; each valve with a filiform; dorso-apical cusp or awn. Seeds 2(3) per mericarp; reddish brown; reniform; sparsely pubescent about the raphe; with or without endosperm.

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