Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Subshrubs 1–2(–3) m tall, velutinous or tomentose with stellate and simple hairs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple and often palmately lobed to divided. Alternate. Blades broadly ovate to orbicular 2–20 cm long. Apex acuminate. Base cordate with lobes sometimes overlapping. Surfaces downy on both surfaces, villous or hispid along the nerves. Margins dentate. Petioles about as long as blades. Stipules broadly ovate to orbicular, 10–15 mm long, 5–12 mm wide, base cordate to auriculate.

Flowers: Flowers in terminal racemes or panicles; pedicels 1–3 cm long, articulate; involucel absent. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx composed of connate sepals, 0.5–0.7 cm long, campanulate to cup-shaped, sometimes reflexed, 5-lobed, scarcely accrescent, the lobes valvate in bud. Corolla actinomorphic to moderately zygomorphic, tubular-campanulate to broadly campanulate, rotate to subreflexed; corolla of 5 petals, yellow to pale orange, purple-veined basally, 0.8–1.2 cm long, 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 up to 8 mm long, usually shorter than petals; 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; staminal column up to 8 mm long; style branches and stigmas maroon.

Fruit: Schizocarps; often tardily separating and appearing capsular; dark brown; broadly urceolate–retuse;9–12 mm long; 1.3–1.8 cm in diameter; white pubescent; mericarps usually oblong in lateral view; 8–12; thin–walled; usually smooth; acuminate or short–beaked dorsoventrally; loculicidal dehiscence complete or partial. Seeds usually 3 per mericarp; gray to brownish black; reniform; 2–2.5mm long; pustular puberulent; with or without endosperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 14

Habitat: Occurring in disturbed areas.

Elevation Range: