Mentzelia aspera L.

Slender erect or sprawling annuals. Stems slender, dichotomous, up to about 6 dm. long, rather thinly covered with short weak glochidiate hairs. Leaves alter-nate, rather sparse, shortly but evidently petiolate, the blade rather hastately 3-lobed and irregularly serrate, acuminate, broadly obtuse at the base, about 8 cm. long and 4 cm. broad or somewhat larger toward the base of the stem, diminishing gradually toward the tip, lax and thinly membranaceous, weakly and variously strigillose with simple hairs above and below, the petiole about 5 mm. long. Flowers in few-flowered leafy-bracted cymes at the tips of the branches, mediocre, pale orange or salmon, sessile or essentially so; hypanthium narrowly cylindrical, about 1 cm. long and 1 mm. broad at anthesis, densely covered with slender glochidiate hairs, the calyx lobes broad trigonal at the base, very narrowly subcaudate-acuminate, nearly as long as the hypanthium, sparsely strigillose but without glochidiate hairs; petals 5, obovate, up to 1 cm. long and 5 mm. broad, spreading, pale orange or salmon, slightly united at the base; stamens about 20-30, all fertile, but the outermost somewhat longer and with enlarged somewhat petaloid filaments, somewhat shorter than the petals. Capsule narrowly cylindrical but slightly at-tenuate toward the base, up to about 2.5 cm. long and 5 mm. broad, 3-valved, covered with the persistent glochidiate hairs.

It is a tropical plant. In Argentina it grows between 500-2,000 m above sea level.

The oily seeds are pounded and added to other food.