Home
A herb. It has a succulent taproot. The stems are 2 m long and grow each year from the taproot. The leaves are simple and opposite. They are 6.5 cm long by 4 cm wide. They have lobes. The flowers are tube shaped and 5-6 cm long. The fruit have hooks that attached to other objects and enable it to spread.
Limb of corolla purple or (often in subsp. transvaalense) yellow, 25–40 mm. in diam.; tube usually light purple or pink, occasionally white, outside, usually more or less yellow inside, 50–60 mm. long.
Leaves narrowly ovate to ovate, up to 65 mm. long and 40 mm. broad; petiole 30–45 mm. long; lamina usually pinnatilobed, with 3 or 5 main lobes (terminal lobe included), sometimes polymorphic.
Fruit with 4 rows of curved arms bearing recurved spines, the length of the longest arm exceeding the width of the capsule proper, the total diam. of fruit up to 15 cm.
Perennial herb with several prostrate annual stems from a succulent taproot, with additional tubers on lateral roots.
Seeds 25–30 in each loculi, in 4 rows.
