Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect or sometimes spreading herbs or subshrubs 0.5–1.5 m tall, glabrate to moderately pubescent with hairs denser hairs compared to S. acuta.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, 2-ranked. Leaves larger, wider, more finely serrate than S. acuta. Base rounded compared to S. acuta. Surfaces glabrous or with minute scattered stellate hairs and simple appressed antrorse hairs. Margins serrate to near base. Petioles much shorter than blades. Stipules narrower than in S. acuta.

Flowers: Flowers often in glomerate clusters. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx somewhat plicate in bud, (4–)5–7 mm long, slightly accrescent and often black in fruit, sometimes yellowish at base, usually 10-ribbed. Corolla actinomorphic to moderately zygomorphic, rotate to campanulate, corolla of 5 petals, obovate, white to yellow, 6–10 mm 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 included, up to 3 mm long, terminated by filaments; anthers monothecal. Pollen globose, echinate. Ovary superior, (1-)3-celled to many-celled, the carpels borne in a single whorl or rarely seemingly superposed whorls, placentation axile, carpels usually 5-10 or numerous; ovules 1 per carpel, pendulous; style exceeding the staminal column, unbranched and stigmatically lobed at apex or branched, style-branches as many as carpels; stigmas capitate.

Fruit: Schizocarps depressed–conical; somewhat fluted; up to 6 mm in diameter; mericarps (6)7–10; 1-seeded; blackish with pale lateral walls; ca. 2.2–3(–3.5) mm long; with 2 slender apical awns 1–2.5 mm long; lower dorsal and lateral walls obscurely rugose–reticulate; indehiscent; upper 1/3 dehiscent; each valve smooth. Seeds brown; 1.7–2 mm long; trigonous-obovoid; pilose about the raphe; otherwise glabrousm with or without endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: 0–600 m.