Description
Key Characters:
Growth Form:
Erect perennial herbs 5–6 dm tall, colorless sap.
Stems:
Becoming somewhat woody at base, stems glaucous, branched, forming bushy clumps.
Roots:
Leaves:
Leaves simple.
Alternate.
Blades ternately cleft into numerous linear–elliptic lobes, ca. 6–17 cm long, the lobes 2–5 mm wide.
Surfaces glaucous.
Margins highly dissected.
Long-petiolate.
Stipules absent.
Flowers:
Flowers solitary, terminal.
Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic.
Calyx of 2 sepals; sepals caducous.
Petals dark yellow, broadly obovate to suborbicular, distinct, 3–4.5 cm long, the fifth petal, when present, ca. 2 cm long.
Stamens ca. 70, orange; filaments filiform; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits.
Ovary superior, oblong–elliptic, longitudinally 10–ribbed; stigma peltate, subsessile.
Fruit:
Capsules cylindrical; ca. 9–10 cm long; dehiscing by 2 valves from base upward.
Seeds numerous; subglobose; rugose; endosperm oily.
Ploidy:
2n = 28; 56
Habitat:
Remnant dry woodland.
Elevation Range:
550–575 m.