Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Glabrous to glabrate annual or perhaps sometimes perennial herbs 2–5 dm tall.

Stems: Stems decumbent or erect.

Roots: Not rooting at the nodes.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, basal. Blades broadly cordate, reniform, or semiorbicular, blades 2–5.5 cm long, 2–8.5 cm wide. Margins deeply 3–parted and again shallowly crenately lobed; cauline leaves margins entire or serrate. Petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers 1–2 in cymose inflorescences. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic. Sepals ovate, 4–7 mm long, spreading, apex mucronate, caducous. Corolla of 5 petals, yellow, obovate, 5–8 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. 5–6 mm long; the faces covered with stout; curved spines; glabrous; margins keeled; beak 2–2.5 mm long; falcate. Seeds with a copious endosperm and small embryo.

Ploidy: 2n = 32; 42; 48

Habitat: Fields and pastures.

Elevation Range: 1,220–1,380 m.