Stylisma pickeringii (Torrey) A. Gray var. pattersonii (Fern. & B. G. Schub.) Myint, big–pod bonamia. Perennial herb, vinelike, deep–rooted, not twining, with long, trailing and prostrate branches; shoots with only slender cauline leaves, pubescent with fine, 2–armed (T–shaped) hairs.
Stems cylindric, to 2 mm diameter (excluding galls), wiry, with fine, ± appressed, 2–armed hairs often red–tinged.
Leaves helically alternate, simple, ± sessile, without stipules; petiole short, nongreen; blade linear and folded upward from midrib, < 20—45 × 1—2 mm, entire, blunt–acute at tip, 1–veined with midrib sunken on upper surface and raised on lower surface, internally gland–dotted, sparsely pubescent with 2–armed hairs.
Inflorescence cyme, axillary, 1—3–flowered, bracteate, soft–hairy with fine, 2–armed hairs; peduncle slender and wiry, at anthesis = leaf, to 45 × 0.4 mm, short–tomentose, with a disclike pulvinus at base; bracts at top of peduncle 2, alternate, the upper bract subtending pedicel of the oldest flower, the lower bract subtending the remaining cyme but often abscising, linear, leaflike, 5—25 × 1.3 mm, sparsely hairy and inconspicuously gland–dotted; pedicel at anthesis to 4 mm long, short–tomentose.
Flower bisexual, radial, ca. 18 mm across; sepals 5, helically alternate, overlapping, acute–ovate and cupped, 3.8—4.2 × 2.5—3 mm, tough, with elaborate network of secretory tubes, densely villous, persistent; corolla shallowly and broadly 5–lobed, broadly funnel–shaped, in range ± 12 mm long, white, pleated in bud; tube absent; throat from base of corolla, villous with upward–pointing hairs on outer (lower) surface exposed in bud, covered surface glabrous; stamens 5, fused to base of corolla; filaments subequal, 9—10 mm long, winged to midpoint, the wings 0.6—0.8 mm wide, papillate–hairy along wings and margins, upper portion tapered to tip; anthers dorsifixed, dithecal, 1.6—1.8 mm long, white, longitudinally dehiscent; pollen white; nectary disc below ovary, conspicuously 5–lobed,0.5—0.6 mm long, 1.5 mm diameter, light orange, upper nectary with some long hairs; pistil 1, ca. 12 mm long; ovary superior, conic, ca. 1 × 1 mm, white, covered by sense, suberect hairs, 1–chambered with 4 large, white, ovoid ovules; style cylindric (not tapered), with 3 short, unequal branches, ca. 11 mm long, white, lacking hairs, the branches fingerlike, to 1.5 mm long; stigma terminal, capitate, minute.
Fruit capsule, (1—)2–seeded, ovoid slightly compressed side–to–side, 8 × 6 × 4 mm, shorted beaked at top, with creases below midpoint.
Seed ovate in outline (not rounded), ca. 4 × 2 mm, brown, glabrous.
A. C. Gibson