Cuscuta pentagona Engelm. var. pubescens (Engelm.) Yunck., papillate five–angled dodder. Annual parasitic vine, twining, flexible–stemmed, attached to host stems with haustoria (locally at least on Tragia ramosa and Phyllanthus polygonoides and unidentified grass); shoots leafless, light orange (lacking chlorophyll), glabrous.
Stems cylindric, ca. 0.3 mm diameter, light orange, with scattered, minute bumps.
Leaves absent
Inflorescence axillary cluster of condensed cymes, each cyme several–flowered, bracteate, glabrous; bract subtending principal forks, cupped awl–shaped, 1—1.7 mm long, fleshy, colorless, papillate to midpoint, bract at base of cyme nearly sheathing becoming less sheathing upward; axes papillate, pale orange; bractlet < pedicel.
Flower bisexual, radial, 3—3.5 mm across; buds spheroid (not noticeably angled); calyx 5–lobed, inconspicuously 5–angled, mostly colorless (white); tube cup–shaped, ± 1.3 mm long, green at base beneath ovary, without veins; lobes ascending, deltate–ovate, ca. 1.1 × 0.9—1 mm; corolla 5–lobed, with horizontally spreading but later strongly reflexed lobes, outer surfaces beaded (minutely vesicular); tube short bell–shaped, ca. 1.5 × 2 mm, 0.6 mm wide at base, outer surface short–papillate, internally having 5 appendages fused to base of corolla tube opposite the stamens, the appendages ascending leaning toward styles, tongue–shaped, ca. 1.2 mm long, densely fringed with ca. 30 colorless, fingerlike projections, completely filling the corolla tube and hiding the ovary; lobes not overlapping, acute–ovate, ca. 1.2 mm long, upper surface not papillate; stamens 5, fused to corolla at sinuses with filaments decurrent on corolla tube; filaments ascending, ± 0.6 mm long, white, glabrous; anthers dorsifixed, dithecal, at anthesis positioned over stigmas, 0.5 mm long, orange–yellow, longitudinally dehiscent; pollen orange–yellow; nectary disc around base of ovary, at anthesis inconspicuous and without nectar, in fruit muffin–shaped, glossy dark green, producing nectar; pistil 1; ovary superior, oblate, 0.6—0.7 × 1 mm, green and papillate, 2–chambered, each chamber with 2 ovules; styles 2, free from base, suberect, unequal, 0.5—0.6 mm long, white; stigmas capitate, terminal, hemispheric, 0.25 mm diameter, orange.
Fruit capsule, weakly dehiscent rupturing irregularly, typically 2—4–seeded, broadly ovoid, < 2 mm wide, aging with orange seeds showing through thin wall and somewhat bulging at seeds, conspicuously papillate.
Seed ovoid, ca. 0.7 × 0.35 mm, light orange.
A. C. Gibson