Description
Key Characters:
Growth Form:
Stout, 9–12 dm tall.
Stems:
Caulescent, branched, glabrous and glaucous.
Roots:
Taproots stout.
Leaves:
Leaves compound (pinnately decompound).
Alternate.
Blades ovate to triangular with, with filiform ultimate divisions., ca. 30 cm long, ca. 40 cm. wide. pinnately decompound, the ultimate divisions filiform 4–40 mm long, ca. 0.5 mm wide. Ovate to triangular, ca. 30 cm long, ca. 40 cm. wide. Pinnately decompound, the ultimate divisions filiform 4-40 mm long, ca. 0.5 mm wide.
Surfaces glaucous to dark green.
Margins highly dissected.
Petioles 7–14 cm long, wholly sheathing.
Stipules absent.
Flowers:
Flowers in peduncles 1.5–6.5 cm long, rays 15–40 cm, spreading-ascending in flower, ascending to suberect in fruit, unequal, pedicels 2–10 mm long, subequal.
Flowers bisexual (perfect).
Calyx (sepals) absent.
Corolla of 5 petals; petals yellow, obovate, with a narrower inflexed apex.
Stamens 5, inserted on an epigynous disk.
Ovary inferior, 2-celled; ovules 1 per cells, anatropous; styles 2, usually swollen at base into a stylopodium. Styles short, the stylopodium conical; carpophore 2–parted.
Fruit:
Fruit oblong; compressed laterally 3.5–4 mm long; 1.5–2 mm wide; ribs prominent and acute; mericarps subterete; glabrous; vittae solitary in the intervals; 2 on the commissure.
Seeds 1 per mericarp; embryo small; endosperm cartilaginous. seed face plane or slightly concave.
Ploidy:
2n = 16; 22; 26; 30;44
Habitat:
Cultivated and naturalized along roadsides; in pastures; and other open sites.
Elevation Range: