Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Plants slender, decumbent, 1–6 dm tall, hispid throughout.

Stems: Caulescent, branches spreading. stem hispid or pubescent.

Roots: Taproots slender.

Leaves: Leaves compound (1–2–pinnate). Alternate. Blades oblong in general outline, the ultimate divisions linear to filiform, 1–2 mm wide. Apex acute. Margins entire or lobed. Petioles sheathing. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in peduncles 0–2.5 cm long, shorter than the leaves, involucre usually absent, rays 2–3, short to absent, involucel of 6–8 linear-lanceolate, acute bractlets longer than the pedicels. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx teeth minute. Corolla of 5 petals; petals white, obovate, with a narrower inflexed apex. Stamens 5, inserted on an epigynous disk. Ovary inferior, 2-celled; ovules 1 per cells, anatropous; styles 2, usually swollen at base into a stylopodium. Styles short, the stylopodium conical, carpophore bifid at apex or cleftf ⅓–½ its length.

Fruit: Fruit ovoid; 3–5 mm long; 1–2 mm wide; the outer mericarps bristly; the inner ones warty or bristly externally; mericarps readily separating; vittae solitary under the secondary ribs; 2 on the commissure. Seeds 1 per mericarp; embryo small; endosperm cartilaginous. seed face concave to shallowly sulcate.

Ploidy: 2n = 12; 22; 24

Habitat:

Elevation Range: