Mesogramma apiifolium Dc.

Annual herb, up to 1.5 m high, erect, branching from base, glabrous. Leaves alternate; blade narrowly ovate to elliptic in outline, up to 70 x 30 mm, deeply dentate, lobed or pinnate, glabrous, smaller upwards; petiole up to 30 mm long. Heads radiate, solitary or up to 12 corymbosely arranged. Involucral bracts 10-21, 4-6 mm long, ± biseriate, green with scarious margins, midribbed with thin, blackish, resin vein and 2 lateral, blackish, resin ducts; lateral resin stripes of inner bracts broad and glandular dotted; minutely calyculate. Flowers: ray florets 8-13; disc floret corollas tubular, gradually widening above, 5-lobed, distinctly 5-veined, with black veins from corolla tips down to base of tube, corolla lobes with thin lateral veins additionally to dark midvein, ray and disc florets yellow; Aug.-Oct. Fruit with cypsela subtriquetrous or somewhat compressed, black, constricted apically and basally, sparsely papillose on 3 ridges, apically and basally with crown of longer hairs. Pappus of many barbellate bristles, basally connate.