Heliophila coronopifolia L.

Erect annual herbs 10-60 cm high, mostly with a single stem, but often freely branched above; lower part or only the few basal nodes puberulous or scabro-puberulous, rarely completely glabrous. Leaves 6-15 cm long, simple or pinnately 3-13 lobed, the upper lobes sometimes lobed again; lobes filiform or linear or flat and up to 3 mm broad; upper leaves smaller and with fewer lobes; often minutely puberulous, especially when young; exstipulate or subtended by 2 minute filiform stipules. Pedicels subtended by 2 minute bracts or not, glabrous or puberulous; in flower 4-9 mm long, slender, erect; in fruit 6-12 mm long, stout, erect or spreading. Sepals 4.5-7.5 mm long, glabrous, purplish; outer two 1-2 mm broad, narrowly oblong, cucullate, shortly horn-tipped; inner two 1.5-3 mm broad, oblong, saccate at the base and with a broad membranous margin. Petals 6.5-13 mm long, 3-8 mm broad, narrowly obovate to obovate-circular, rounded, clawed, each with an appendage. Filaments 2.5-4.9 mm and 2.9-5.4 mm long; the short ones each with an appendage. Anthers 1.8-3 mm long. Ovary linear with a slender style and capitate stigma; ovules 16-50. Fruits 3-9 cm long, 1.3-2 mm broad, linear, moniliform, the constrictions deep or shallow; valves flat, 1-or obscurely 3-nerved, glabrous or occasionally sparsely puberulous near the base; style 1-5 mm long, stout, ± cylindrical or stoutly subulate, conical-subulate or nodose. Seeds 1.6-2.4 x 0.8-1.5 mm, oblong, flattened, narrowly margined.