Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect annual herbs, not forming rosettes.

Stems: Stems 4–15 dm long, unbranched or sometimes branched, densely long–villous, shortvillous, and glandular pubescent.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades narrowly lanceolate, (3–)5–15 cm long, 0.5–1.5 cm wide. Base attenuate. Margins serrate flat to undulate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in the upper leaf axils, 1 to few opening each day per stem near sunset. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic, 4-merous, in the leaf axils, opening near sunset or near sunrise. Sepals with distinct tips 1.5–4 mm long, valvate. Petals yellow, broadly obovate, (1.5–)2–4 cm long. Stamens 8, in two series; anthers versatile, the sporogenous tissue in each locule undivided, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Pollen ca. 100% fertile. Ovary inferior, as many cells and carpels as sepals; ovules anatropous; style 1; stigma deeply 4-lobed, the lobes linear, held above or surrounded by anthers at anthesis.

Fruit: Capsules conspicuously enlarged in upper half; (2–)2.5–4(–5) cm long. Seeds in 2 rows per cell; ellipsoid; 1.5–2 mm long.

Ploidy: Self-compatible; 14; 7 (bivalents or small rings at meiotic metaphase I)

Habitat:

Elevation Range: 1,100–2,050 m.