Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annual to perennial subshrubs up to 2(–3) m tall.

Stems: Stems usually cinereously stellate velutinous and pubescent with simple hairs.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades cordate–ovate to cordate–orbicular, 2–16 cm long. Apex acuminate. Surfaces densely gray stellate puberulent. Margins subentire to serrate. Petioles often longer than blades. Stipules usually present.

Flowers: Flowers solitary or paired in the leaf axils, pedicels usually 2–5 cm long in flower, longer in fruit, articulate. Involucel absent. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx campanulate to cup-shaped, sometimes reflexed, 0.3–0.5 cm long, scarcely accrescent in fruit, 5-lobed, sometimes irregularly cleft or truncate, the lobes valvate in bud. Corolla actinomorphic to moderately zygomorphic, cup–shaped, corolla of 5 petals, obovate, yellow to orange, 2.5–3 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 ca. 8 mm long; 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; style branches as many as carpels; stigmas terminal, capitate.

Fruit: Schizocarps; often tardily separating and appearing capsular; black; broadly cylindrical with flaring; truncate to emarginate apex; 1.5-2 cm in diameter; densely pubescent; mericarps 15-22; reniform-oblong; with a short dorso-apical mucro; lateral walls usually smooth; loculicidal dehiscence complete or partial. Seeds 2–3 per mericarp; reniform; 2–3 mm long; surface punctate; glabrous or stellate pubescent; with or without endosperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 36; 42; 72

Habitat: Occurring in disturbed sites; near the ocean.

Elevation Range: Low elevations.