Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect subshrubs 0.5–1.5m tall, whitish to yellowish tellate velutinous or stellate tomentose.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades ovate to oblong or sometimes orbicular, 2–10(–12) cm long. Base usually shallowly cordate. Surfaces densely stellate strigose. Margins serrate. Petioles usually ⅓ or more the length of blades. Stipules filiform, 3–7 mm long.

Flowers: Flowers usually in axillary clusters, often forming dense panicles or corymbs of racemes by reduction of leaves, subsessile or pedicellate; involucel absent. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 5–7 mm long, accrescent and clasping in fruit, usually 10-ribbed. Corolla actinomorphic to moderately zygomorphic, rotate to campanulate, corolla of 5 petals, obovate, cream to pale yellow or orangish yellow, 7–9 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, 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, branches as many as carpels; stigmas capitate.

Fruit: Schizocarps 6–7 mm in diameter; mericarps 8–12(–14); 1-seeded; brownish; the body 2.8–3.5 mm long; with 2 retrorsely simple pubescent apical awns 2–4(–5) mm long; dorsal and lateral surfaces rugose–reticulate; indehiscent; upper 1/3 dehiscent; each valve smooth; usually acute or apically spined. Seeds trigonous-obovoid; 1.8–2.3 mm long; glabrous or with a few hairs along the raphe; with or without endosperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 28; 32

Habitat: Naturalized in dry sites.

Elevation Range: Primarily low elevations.