Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annual herbs 1–3 dm tall.

Stems: Stems erect, pubescent with soft spreading hairs.

Roots: Not rooting at the nodes.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, basal. Blades reniform, 1.5–2 cm long, 2–2.5 cm wide. Surfaces pilose. Margins 3-parted and again lobed; cauline leaves margins entire or serrate. Petiolate. Stipules absent or minute.

Flowers: Flowers 1 to several in cymes. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic. Sepals yellowish green, narrowly ovate, ca. 1 mm long, spreading, caducous. Corolla of 5 petals, yellow, narrowly elliptic, 1–2 mm long, base with a truncate nectary scale. Stamens (5–)numerous; anthers dithecal, opening by a longitudinal slit. Ovary superior; carpels numerous, each 1-celled.

Fruit: Achenes 10–20 in a globose head; obovate; ca. 1.5 mm long; the faces covered by reddish brown papillae that are produced into minute slender hooks; margins strongly marked; beak deltoid; recurved; ca.0.5 mm long. Seeds with a copious endosperm and small embryo.

Ploidy: 2n = 14; 28

Habitat: Fields and pastures.

Elevation Range: 910–1,830 m.