Leptinella dendyi

Detailed description

Fleshy, gynodioecious, perennial herb producing 1 or more summer green leaf tufts amongst mobile scree. Rhizomes ascending, at or close to rock surface when young, becoming deeply buried with age, up to 10 mm long, thick, very fleshy, pale or pinkish-red, sparsely short-hairy, glabrate; branches often in clusters of up to 4 diverging from a flowering node and the nodes immediately behind, most of these dying in the first season, leaves usually crowded around rhizome apex, sometimes up to 25 mm apart. Roots numerous, fleshy, very long, extensively branching, thick up to 1.5 mm diameter. Leaves 2-pinnatifid, 20-50 x 3-80 mm; blade 10-30 mm long, narrowly obovate, coriaceous and fleshy, grey-green tinged with red, especially on the primary and secondary axes, sparsely pilose hairy, midrib not raised on ventral surface; pinnae 8-12 pairs, cut to rhachis, proximal pinnae distant, distal ones overlapping, broadly elliptic and divided, reducing to distant oblong simple proximal pinnae; secondary pinnae 9 per pinna, equally on distal and proximal sides, cut to midrib of pinna, with rounded apices, upturned at an angle to the balde, occasionally with a linear lobe on one or both sides. Peduncles longer than leaves, 30-80 mm, stout, fleshy, pilose hairy with 6-15 evenly spaced bracts; lowermost bracts scarcely smaller than leaves, reducing evenly to simple, oblong or 1-pinnatifid uppermost bracts. Capitula either female, male or perfect in varying proprotions within populations. Pistillate capitula up to 20 mm diameter, surface flat; involucre spreading and upturned at margins; involucral bracts numerous, unequally 2-, to multiseriate, grey-green tinged red, more or less pilose hairy, outer bracts exceeding florets, thick, simple and oblong with 1-8 oblong lobes on both sides (scarious margins absent), gradually changing to thinner, simple, obovate inner involucral bracts with finely scarious margins; receptacle more or less flat; florets 200-900 in many rows, 3.25-4.25 mm long, straight, pale yellow with brown corolla teeth, the whole corolla turning brown after anthesis; corolla 4 times as long as wide, teeth conspicuous, equal and diverging; staminate florets < 10 mm diameter; surface convex, involucre hemispherical; florets 120-450. Cypsela 2.9 x 0.7 mm, slightly compressed, golden brown, deeply wrinked when mature