Erect and bushy to overarching or scandent subshrub, to ± 3 m. tall.. Stem and divergent branches closely striate, thinly to moderately furnished with appressed whitish hairs or glabrescent with age, mostly terete but sometimes a few internodes rather bluntly tetragonous; nodes scarcely swollen, the stem and branches not at all shrunken above them.. Leaves narrowly to broadly oblong, elliptic or broadly ovate, 2.5–7 × 1.5–5 cm., acute to rather blunt at the apex, cuneate to truncate or subcordate at the base with a 3–12 mm. petiole, when young densely appressed-pilose on both surfaces, but soon becoming thinly hairy, falling early and few remaining on the fruiting plant.. Inflorescences terminal on the stem and branches, formed of a raceme of usually opposite sessile or shortly (to ± 6 mm.) pedunculate globose finally increasingly distant heads of congested cymes, heads 1–1.25 cm. in diameter in flower, in fruit enlarging and forming burr up to 2.25 cm. across, the spines of the modified flowers and the cyme branches however not greatly accrescent or rigid and the burr much softer than that of C. erinacea; peduncle 2.5–7 mm., both it and the inflorescence-axis thinly to densely white pilose; bracts deltoid-ovate, 3.5–4 mm., whitish-membranous, aristate with the excurrent pale midrib, subglabrous; bracteoles deltoid-ovate, 4–6.5 mm., subglabrous, pale and membranous, aristate with the excurrent pale midrib, the arista so little lengthening (to ± 2–3 mm.) in fruit that the spines of the burr still appear broad-based; ultimate divisions of cymes of a central fertile flower subtended on each side by a triad of 1 fertile and 2 modified flowers, or fertile flowers often absent except in the lower divisions.. Outer 2 tepals lanceolate, 4–6 mm., rather broadly hyaline-margined, (4–)5–7-nerved in the central green portion with the nerves gradually reducing in length outwards, the midrib excurrent in a short mucro, the nerved portion ± densely long-pilose with barbellate multicellular hairs especially about the apex; inner 3 tepals shorter, 4–5 mm., oblong-lanceolate, 3–5-nerved, with a similar indumentum and also shortly mucronate.. Modified flowers of a 2 small bracteoliform processes and 2 small straight spines.. Filaments firm, compressed, 2.5–3.5 mm.; pseudostaminodes flabelliform, ± 1 mm., dentate at the plane apex, with no dorsal scale.. Ovary ovoid-subglobose, ± 1.5 [???] above.. Style slender, 2–2.5 mm.. Capsule ovoid, ± 3 mm., slightly truncate but scarcely hardened at the apex.. Seed ovoid, 2.75 mm., brown, almost smooth.. Fig. 14/6, 7.
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