Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial herbs or subshrubs up to 2(–3) m tall, densely pubescent, the hairs principally stellate, (5)6–12–armed, and simple.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades ovate, 2–8(–14.5) cm long, sometimes obscurely 3–lobed. Apex acute to acuminate. Base subcordate. Margins crenate–dentate. Petioles shorter than blades. Stipules linear to triangular, usually curved, +/- persistent.

Flowers: Flowers in dense terminal spikes up to 10(–18) cm long, or sometimes solitary, each one subtended by a bifid bract up to 5(–6) mm long; involucral bracts 3, lanceolate, (4–)5–7(–9) mm long, adnate basally to calyx, hispid with simple or bifurcate hairs. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx composed of connate sepals, 5-lobed, often angled in bud, 5–6 mm long at anthesis, up to 10 mm long in fruit, valvate in bud. Corolla actinomorphic to moderately zygomorphic, yellowish orange, rotate, 12–17 mm in diameter, the corolla of 5 petals, obovate, 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 2–3 mm long, shorter than corolla and same in color, stellulate pubescent, terminated by filaments; anthers monothecal. Pollen globose, echinate. Ovary superior, carpels 5-18, borne in a single whorl or rarely seemingly superposed whorls, placentation axile; ovules 1 per carpel, ascending; style exceeding the staminal column, branches as many as carpels; stigmas terminal, capitate.

Fruit: Schizocarps reddish brown; (4–)5–6 mm in diameter; mericarps (9)10–15(–18); 1.5–2 mm high; 1.5–2.5(–3) mm wide; transverse-elliptic to quadrangular in lateral view; unarmed or sometimes with an obscure ventro-apical mucro and dorso-lateral ribs; dehiscent basally and baso–dorsally; endoglossum usually present. Seeds 1.3–1.7 mm long; reddish brown to black; subreniform; compressed; glabrous; with or without endosperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 24

Habitat: Boulder–strewn grass and shrubland.

Elevation Range: 0–2,000 m.