Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annual to perennial subshrubs up to 2(–3) m tall.

Stems: Stems usually cinereously stellate velutinous and pubescent with simple hairs.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Leaves alternate. Blades cordate–ovate to cordate–orbicular, 2–16 cm long. Apex acuminate. Surfaces densely gray stellate puberulent. Margins subentire to serrate. Petioles often longer than blades. Stipules usually present.

Flowers: Flowers solitary or paired in the leaf axils, pedicels usually 2–5 cm long in flower, longer in fruit, articulate. Involucel absent. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx campanulate to cup-shaped, sometimes reflexed, 0.3–0.5 cm long, scarcely accrescent in fruit, 5-lobed, sometimes irregularly cleft or truncate, the lobes valvate in bud. Corolla actinomorphic to moderately zygomorphic, cup–shaped, corolla of 5 petals, obovate, yellow to orange, 2.5–3 cm long, 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 ca. 8 mm long; filaments terminal; anthers monothecal. Pollen globose, echinate. Ovary superior, (1-)3-celled to many-celled, carpels 5 to numerous, borne in a single whorl or rarely seemingly superposed whorls; ovule placentation axile, each with 2-9 ovules in a vertical row; style exceeding the staminal column; style branches as many as carpels; stigmas terminal, capitate.

Fruit: Schizocarps; often tardily separating and appearing capsular; black; broadly cylindrical with flaring; truncate to emarginate apex; 1.5-2 cm in diameter; densely pubescent; mericarps 15-22; reniform-oblong; with a short dorso-apical mucro; lateral walls usually smooth; loculicidal dehiscence complete or partial. Seeds 2–3 per mericarp; reniform; 2–3 mm long; surface punctate; glabrous or stellate pubescent; with or without endosperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 36; 42; 72

Habitat: Occurring in disturbed sites; near the ocean.

Elevation Range: Low elevations.