Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Subshrubs or shrubs 0.5–1(–2) m tall, densely but closely white or silvery stellulate pubescent.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades cordate–ovate, 1–6(–10) cm long. Apex acute to acuminate. Surfaces concolorous, densely tomentulose, obscured by pubescence. Margins serrate to crenate. Petioles usually ½ or more the length of blades. Stipules usually present.

Flowers: Flowers solitary or, by reduction of leaves, in terminal racemes; pedicels filiform, 1–3.5 cm long, articulate apically, involucel absent. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx campanulate to cup-shaped, 0.2–0.4 cm long, 5-lobed, splitting and reflexed in fruit, the lobes valvate in bud. Corolla actinomorphic to moderately zygomorphic, rotate to reflexed; corolla of 5 petals, obovate white to yellow or pink with maroon veins and a basal spot, 0.4–4.6 cm 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 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, branches as many as carpels; stigmas terminal, capitate.

Fruit: Schizocarps pale brown; cylindrical-truncate; 6-8 mm long; grayish to yellowish pubescent; mericarps 5; narrowly oblong; angled dorso-ventrally; often tardily separating and appearing capsular; mericarps usually oblong in lateral view; apex blunt; ± awned; lateral walls usually smooth; loculicidal dehiscence complete or partial. Seeds 3 per mericarp; globose–reniform; ca. 1.5 mm long; densely puberulent; with or without endosperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 14*.

Habitat: Occurring primarily in leeward; dry habitats.

Elevation Range: 0–220 m.