Leptinella lanata

Detailed description

Robust, monoecious, creeping perennial herb forming small diffuse patches. Rhizomes on soil or rock surfaces, stout, 1–4 mm diameter, somewhat fleshy, initially covered with a thick tangle of lanate hairs, soon becoming glabrate or glabrous, dark brown and more or less woody; branches usually clustered, up to 4 radiating from around a flowering node; leaves 2–4 clustered at apex, most 20–50 mm distant. Short shoots usually absent, occasionally present as a few reduced leaves. Roots largely confined to older stems, slender up to 1 mm diameter. Leaves 1-pinnatifid, 10–25 × 4–10 mm; blade 5–20 mm long, broadly elliptic, thick, fleshy, light green, covered with a few lanate hairs when young, especially on rhachis, glabrate to glabrous; midrib not raised on ventral surface; pinnae 3–5 pairs, distal ones overlapping, cut to rhachis, broadly elliptic or oblong if undivided; teeth up to 4 per pinna, on larger pinna, mostly on distal margin, cut ½ across pinna, triangular, obtuse. Peduncles borne on rhizomes, longer than leaves, 10–30 mm, slender, ebracteate, densely lanate hairy. Capitula 6–10 mm diameter, surface hemisperhical; involucre hemispherical; involucral bracts 30 in 2–3-seriate, subequal rows, broadly elliptic, thick, fleshy, green, covered with deciduous lanate hairs, margins narrowly hyaline, scarious; pistillate florets 50–100, 2- or more seriate, 3 mm long, more or less straight, yellow-green, corolla twice as long as wide, dentition equal, staminate florets 70–90. Cypsela up to 2.3 × 0.8 mm, golden-brown, turgid, obscurely 4-angled, shiny and unwrinkled.