Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annual or short-lived perennial herbs from many-branched taproots.

Stems: Stems decumbent, 2–5 dm long, moderately to densely villous, especially on younger parts.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite and basal. Blades orbicular to reniform in outline, 1–2 cm long, 1.5–3.5 cm wide. Surfaces sparsely to moderately villous, especially along veins. Margins deeply palmately 5–9-lobed, the lobes oblong–cuneate, these again divided. Petioles 5–8(–13) cm long. Stipules lanceolate to oblong, ca. 4–5 mm long.

Flowers: Flowers usually in pairs in the leaf axils; peduncles and pedicels slender, pedicels subtended by narrow bracts. Peduncles 1–1.5 cm long, villous, also with some glandular–tipped hairs. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic. Pedicels 1–1.5 cm long, villous, also with some glandular–tipped hairs. Calyx of 5 sepals, oblong to elliptic, 3–4 mm long, moderately villous, apex acuminate and bluntly mucronate, distinct or sometimes connate at base, rarely forming a tube. Corolla of 5 petals, rose purple, obovate, 3–5 mm long, distinct, nectary glands alternate with the petals. Stamens (5)10; filaments ± connate at base, those alternate with the petals longer than others and with basal glands; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior or nearly so, 5-celled, carpels connate around a central column to form a compound ovary with as many cells, fertile portion a lobed ring at base of stylar column, placentation axile; ovules 2 per cell, anatropous to campylotropous, usually pendulous; styles 3–5, slender and beak-like, sometimes narrowed below apex, stylar column elongating to 8–12 mm long in fruit, with a narrower apical portion 1–2 mm long; stigmas slender and dry, rarely capitate.

Fruit: Septicidal and elastically dehiscent capsules separating into as many segments as carpels; a portion of the style splitting off from remainder of stylar column and forming an awn that recurves upward from the persistent central column; usually remaining attached to apex; sometimes the awn also becomes spirally coiled; awn usually hygroscopic; carpel bodies ca. 2 mm long; glabrous; conspicuously transversely wrinkled; breaking away from stylar awn. Seeds 1–2 per segment; smooth or reticulate; retained within carpel body; brown; ellipsoid; the surface smooth; endosperm usually scanty or absent; rarely copious and oily.

Ploidy: 2n = 26

Habitat:

Elevation Range: ca. 1,525 m.