Leptinella dioica

Detailed description

Dioecious or monoecious, creeping, somewhat fleshy perennial herb of usually wet coastal habitats. Rhizomes at or near soil surface, green, dark green to purple-green, pliant, sparsely to densely pilose hairy, pale, wiry and glabrous if buried; branches uncommon, usually single at flowering nodes; leaves in two rows, single at the apex, 3-30 mm apart. Short shoots alternate, with up to 5 clustered leaves, occasionally converting to rhizomes with more distant leaves. Roots slender and weak, up to 0.8 mm diam. Leaves variable in size, shape and divisions, entire, simple, to incised-pinnatifid or pinnatifid, 7-130 x 3-20 mm; blade 5-70(-90) mm, lanceolate, narrowly to broadly oblong, elliptic, oblanceolate or suborbicular, fleshy, light green, green, wine-red or glaucous, usually without dark pigment but sometimes leaf divisions heavily brown or pink-pigmented, more or less glabrous, glandular punctate, midrib not raised on ventral surface, rarely entire, otherwise the lobes, pinnae or teeth, in 4-12(-30) pairs, distant, close-set or overlapping, oblong to orbicular; proximal lobes, pinnae or teeth cut to rhachis, sinuses of distal lobes usually not reaching rhachis, sometimes cut only 1.5 to rhachis at widest part of leaf; teeth often absent but sometimes up to 6 per lobe or pinna, on the distal and outer margins, small triangular, obtuse or rounded, often apiculate. Peduncles sparsely to densely villous on rhizomes, about equal to leaves in length, 10-60(-80) mm, ebracteate or bearing 1 simple bract. Pistillate heads 2-10 mm, up to 12 mm diameter in fruit; surface convex; involucre urceolate; involucral bracts 10-30, subequally 3- or more seriate, broadly elliptic, green, glabrous or sparsely villous, with a wide, usually brown-tipped, scarious margin; inner bracts elongating after anthesis to enclose subglobose fruiting head; florets 10-80 (or more), 2-5 mm long, curved, yellow-green; corolla slightly longer than wide, dentition unequal. Staminate capitula 3-8 mm diameter, involucre hemispherical, bracts 5-10, subequally uni- or biseriate, not growing after anthesis, florets more numerous. Bisexual heads mostly staminate. Cypsela up to 1.9 x 1 mm, initially pale and chartaceous, maturing brown and smooth, slightly compressed, unwrinkled.