Description
Key Characters:
Growth Form:
Perennial herbs.
Stems:
Producing long slender stolons.
Roots:
From 1 to several clumped rhizomes 1–5 cm long.
Leaves:
Leaves compound (odd-pinnate).
In a basal rosette.
Leaflets ovate, obovate, or sometimes rhombic, leaflets (1–)2–8 cm long, 1–5 cm wide, lateral petiolules 0.1–0.5 cm long, the terminal ones 0.1–0.6 cm long.
Upper surfaces bright green, sparsely appressed long–pilose, glabrate with age; lower surfaces glaucous and sparsely to moderately appressed silky pilose, sometimes glabrate with age.
Margins coarsely serrate, sometimes only in upper ½.
Petioles 2–18 cm long, silky pilose (hairs retrorsely appressed or sometimes spreading).
Stipules brown, membranous, usually 0.8–1.7 cm long, coherent to base of petioles.
Flowers:
Flowers in scapes 5–30 cm long, about as long as or longer than leaves, erect in fruit.
Flowers bisexual (perfect) or unisexual (and then plants polygamodioecious). Pedicels usually 15–20 mm long; epicalyx lobes lanceolate, 3.3–5 mm long.
Calyx of 5 sepals, ovate, distinct, imbricate, 3.5–5 mm long, sparsely strigose.
Corolla of 5 petals, white, obovate, distinct, imbricate, 4.5–7 mm long.
Stamens numerous, in 1–3 whorls, persistent; filaments slender; anthers dithecal.
Ovary superior, carpels numerous, attached to the elevated conical receptacle; styles lateral.
Fruit:
Fruit an aggregate consisting of numerous minute achenes borne on the surface of the enlarged fleshy receptacle; white or sometimes red; rather dry; hemispherical; 1–1.5 cm long. Achenes superficially attached; 1–1.3 mm long.
Seeds 1 per achene.
Ploidy:
2n = 14; 35
Habitat:
Mesic to wet forest.
Elevation Range:
730–1,700 m.