Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: short-lived perennial or sometimes annual herbs.

Stems: Stems filiform, decumbent, sometimes rooting at the nodes, 3–6 dm long, glabrous or sometimes with a few scattered hairs on young parts.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades reniform to semicircular, 12–55 mm long, 15–65 mm wide, 5–9–lobed, the lobes broadly deltate, rounded, usually mucronate. Margins entire to palmately lobed. Palmately veined. Long-petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers solitary, axillary. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 2–2.5 mm long. Corolla violet, with a yellow palate, 9–15 mm long. Stamens 4, didynamous, included in corolla tube; anthers glabrous, somewhat coherent. Ovary superior, 2-carpellate, with as many cells; ovule placentation axile.

Fruit: Capsules ca. 4 mm in diameter. Seeds black; broadly ellipsoid to globose; ca. 1 mm in diameter; with high ridges and usually a few tubercles.

Ploidy: 2n = 14

Habitat: Shady areas including forested gulch bottoms; damp rocky ledges.

Elevation Range: 790–950 m.