Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect to spreading shrub to 40 cm long

Stems: stems terete, green, glabrous in young plants, but becoming conspicuously viscid, glandular pubescent throughout as plants age, ascending, sprawling, becoming pendent as they elongate in the wild, much branched, with side branches elongating to length of main axis and flowering at the same time as main axis

Roots:

Leaves:

Flowers: Inflorescence terminal, erect, with (4–)9–27(–45) flowers, pseudo-axillary or with a main axis 20.5–36.5 cm long; bracts green, densely glandular pubescent, the lowermost 13–29 mm long, 7–13 mm wide, those of the distal branches and flowers 5–12 mm long, 3–8 mm wide; pedicels spreading at anthesis, densely glandular pubescent (3–) 5–30 (–40) mm long at anthesis. Flowers hermaphroditic, strongly protandrous. Sepals (4–) 5–6, usually subequal in size, 4.5–11.9 mm in length and 2.5–5 mm in width, occasionally two narrower sepals positioned on opposite sides of the flower, green or whitish-green on adaxial face, occasionally with distinctive whitish margins, concave, ovate, orientated at ca. 90° angle to pedicel, adaxial side glabrous, abaxial side glandular pubescent, margins entire, scarious, apex apiculate. Nectary shaft tubular and notched at apex, rarely dissected in up to 3 parts, flap-like to tubular or partially tubular, 2.0–5.0 mm in length, recurved and appressed at the tip to the opposed sepal, small quantities of pale brown or rarely black nectar produced and, in the greenhouse, released on to subtending sepal as stigmas become receptive. Stamens 8–10(–12), 5.3–10 mm long; anthers ca. 0.9 mm long, yellow, dehiscing after flower opens, but before stigmas become receptive. Styles 5–8(–11), 3.6–10.0 mm in length when receptive, stigmatic papillae on distal half of style. Ovary 1.5–3.0 mm in width, 1.0–2.0 mm in height

Fruit: Capsules 2.6– 3.2 mm long; subglobose; apparently tardily dehiscent. Seeds 13–82; viable following self-pollinations in greenhouse; black; 0.4–0.6 (–0.7) mm long; orbicular-reniform; compressed; the faces transversely rugose; the margins papillose.

Ploidy:

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