Description
Key Characters:
Growth Form:
Perennial herbs.
Stems:
Stems ascending, 3–8 dm long, usually branched.
Roots:
Rhizomatous.
Leaves:
Leaves simple.
Opposite.
Blades lanceolate to ovate or broadly ovate, 3–8(–12) cm long, (0.5–)1–5(–6) cm wide.
Base sessile and amplexicaul.
Surfaces glabrous and ± glaucous.
Margins entire or the uppermost occasionally irregularly dentate.
Petiolate.
Stipules absent.
Flowers:
Flowers in terminal, oblong, cymose inflorescences, bracteate.
Flowers small, bisexual (perfect). Basal spur (2–)5–12 mm long.
Calyx 5–25-toothed, inrolled at anthesis, enlarging and spreading in fruit to form a plumose pappus.
Corolla red, pink, or white, the tube (5–)7–11 mm long, irregular, the tube slender.
Stamen 1, adnate to corolla tube; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits.
Ovary inferior, 3-carpellate; ovule pendulous, anatropous, apical; style 1.
Fruit:
Capsules dry; 3–4 mm long; ribbed; 1–celled; the sterile cells minute; crowned with the plumose pappus.
Seeds 1 per fruit; endosperm absent.
Ploidy:
2n = 14; 32
Habitat:
Elevation Range: