Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Prostrate to ascending, diffusely branched annual or perennial herbs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves compound (pinnate). Opposite, usually 1 of each pair alternately smaller or sometimes abortive. Blades oblong to ovate or elliptic, leaflets 3–11 pairs. Margins entire. Sessile or short–petiolulate. Stipules foliaceous or membranous, lanceolate or subulate to falcate.

Flowers: Flowers in solitary on peduncles arising in the axils of the alternately smaller leaves. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic. Calyx of 5 sepals; sepals ovate to lanceolate, distinct, imbricate in bud, pubescent, deciduous. Corolla of 5 petals, yellow or rarely white, obovate, distinct, imbricate, spreading hemispherically, apex rounded or lobed, quickly wilting, deciduous. Stamens 10, in 2 whorls of 5, the outer whorl opposite the sepals and adnate to them basally, usually slightly longer than inner whorl; filaments filiform or subulate, without appendages; anthers cordate to sagittate. Ovary superior, 5(–12)-celled, ovoid or globose, sessile, densely pubescent, placentation axile; ovules 3–5 per cell, pendulous; style 1, short, stout; stigmas 5, distinct, decurrent.

Fruit: Schizocarps horizontally depressed; tuberculate; spinose; or winged; separating into 5 bony; indehiscent mericarps; each divided internally by oblique transverse septa into 3–5 1–seeded compartments. Seeds oblong–ovoid; seed coat membranous; embryo straight; endosperm absent.

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