Bowlesia incana Ruis Lopez & Pavón, hoary bowlesia. Annual, trailing, weak–stemmed, slender–taprooted, not rosetted, forming long ± prostrate or climbing main shoots, often with 1 axillary branch per node, procumbent or decumbent with ascending flowering shoots, in range rarely > 25 cm tall; shoots easily wilted, stellate–pubescent, lacking a detectable smell.
Stems typically 5–sided, 1—2.5 mm in diameter, internodes often 60—120 mm long, with hairs having 4—8 appressed rays, becoming glabrescent except near nodes; internodes hollow.
Leaves mostly opposite (first node typically alternate), rarely whorled at individual nodes, palmately lobed with 3 or 5(—9) lobes, long–petiolate, with stipules; stipules 2, fused to petioles at base; petiole ± sheathing node, above cylindric, 30—120 mm long, >> blade, fleshy, bearing as many as 6 ± linear to narrowly triangular scarious bracts (easily mistaken as stipules), the bracts in range < 1.4 mm long, membranous, somewhat fringed; blade depressed–ovate to roundish kidney–shaped or broadly ovate, 5— 25(— 30) × (5—)10—35(—45) mm, cordate to truncate at base, lobes obtuse–ovate to obovate, sinuses less than to midpoint, each lobe entire to shallowly 3–lobed with or without a weak point at tip, palmately veined with 3 principal veins at base, pubescent with stalked stellate hairs.
Inflorescence simple umbel, axillary (paired umbels at most nodes), 1—5–flowered, subsessile on very short peduncle, bracteate, stellate–pubescent; bract subtending pedicel narrowly triangular, < 0.5 mm long, membranous; pedicel short.
Flower bisexual, bilateral, 1.5 × 0.5 mm across; sepals 5, erect, unequal, narrowly triangular, 0.2—0.5 mm long, scarious and colorless, acuminate to acute, fringed or not, ± persistent in fruit; petals 5, ± ovate and initially cupped around anther, 0.4—0.5 mm long, in range red–purple in bud lighter after anthesis, not strongly incurved or pointed at tip, lacking midridge on upper (inner) surface, 1–veined, stellate–pubescent on lower surface; stamens 5, free, ascending; filament ± 0.3 mm long, colorless; anthers dorsifixed, dithecal, ± 0.2 mm long, length < width, in range red–purple, longitudinally dehiscent; pollen white; pistil 1; ovary inferior with platform (stylopodium, stylar tissue) on top, compressed bell–shaped, at anthesis 0.3 mm and inconspicuously lobed soon becoming 4–angled, green, stellate–pubescent, 2–chambered, each chamber with 1 ovule; styles 2, ± 0.1 mm long including conic projection (stylopodium), styles and stigmas colorless or aging red.
Fruit schizocarp, of 2 dry, 1–seeded halves (mericarps), 4–angled with outer (dorsal) faces concave, mericarps hemi–ovoid, 1.5—2.3 × 1.5—2 mm, ± inflated but eventually collapsed in space between inner and outer fruit wall, stellate–pubescent on external surfaces, midridge on curved surface where mericarps originally attached.
Seed compressed–ovoid, slightly smaller than fruit wall.
A. C. Gibson & B. A. Prigge