Leptinella traillii subsp. pulchella

Detailed description

Dioecious, creeping, perennial herb forming a open to loosely mmated turf. Rhizomes at or near soil surface, green, dark green to brown, pliant, villously hairy; branches uncommon, usually single at flowering nodes; leaves in two rows, single at apex, 5–20 mm apart. Short shoots alternate on both sides of rhizome, bearing up to 6 clustered leaves, rarely converted into rhizomes with distant leaves. Roots slender, weak, white up to 0.6 mm diameter. Leaves 1-pinnatifid, 10–50 × 4–10 mm; lamina 10–40 mm, obovate, firmly fleshy (rarely weakly coriaceous), scarcely glandular punctate, dark green, with basal pinnae pigmented dark brown, sparsely villous; midrib slightly riased on proximal part of ventral surface; pinnae 4–10 pairs, equidistant, not overlapping, cut to rhachis, oblong to broadly ovate (width less than length); with 4–(10) rather coarse and widely spaced, broadly triangular teeth per pinna, these confined to outer margin or rarely extending onto distal margin, cut ⅙–½ across pinna, acuminate with a sharp pale, often deciduous point, more or less obscured by a tuft or parallel hairs. Peduncles usually on rhizomes, about equal to leaves in length, 10–40 mm, ebracteate or with one simple bract, pilose-hairy. Pistillate capitula 3–5 mm diameter, up to 10 mm in fruit; surface convex; involucre urecolate; involucral bracts 15–20, unequally triseriate, broadly elliptic, green, more or less villous, with a broad hyaline, brown-tipped scarious margin; inner involucral bracts elongating after anthesis to enclose the subglobose fruiting head; florets 20-70, 2-5 mm long, curved, yellow-green; corolla slightly longer than wide, unequally toothed. Staminate heads 4–6 mm diameter, involucre hemispherical; involucral bracts 5–10 in 1–2 subequal rows, not extending after anthesis; florest generally more numerous. Cypsela up to 1.9 × 1 mm, brown, somewhat compressed, at first chartaceous becoming smooth at maturity.