Pectis prostrata Cav.

Prostrate to ascending, much branched, often mat-forming, fibrous-rooted, annual herbs; stems several to many from the base, leafy, terete or round-angled, often purplish, diffusely much branched, pubescent in lines. Leaves linear to narrowly oblanceolate, 1-3 cm long, 1.5-5 mm wide, obtuse, mucronate, marginally ciliate sometimes to above the middle with 4-12 pairs of bristles, scaberulous on the margins, villous-ciliolate toward the base, otherwise glabrous, densely punctate on the pale undersurface with scattered, tiny round glands. Inflorescence of congested cymose clusters; peduncles 1-2 mm long, or heads sessile. Heads radiate; involucres cylindrical, ellipsoid or campanulate, 6-7 mm long, 3 mm wide, the bracts 5, oblong to obovate, obtuse to emarginate with spreading tips, imbricate, indurate-keeled to the tip, bowed out toward the middle, gibbous basally, glabrous, punctate in submarginal rows and sometimes also along the midrib with tiny elliptical glands; ray florets 5, the corollas bright yellow, 3.5-4 mm long, scarcely exceeding the involucres, spreading, but in dried specimens apparently ascending, glabrous, the slender tube ca. 1 mm long, the ligule narrowly ovate but often inrolled and appearing narrower; disc florets 6-15, the corollas yellow, 2.5 mm long, biliabiate, glabrous, the tube narrow, 0.7-1 mm long, the anthers 0.8 mm long with short, truncate appendages, the style branches scarcely exceeding the corolla lobes. Fruit consisting of involucre and enclosed achenes which fall together at maturity; achenes black, narrowly clavate, obscurely many-ribbed, 3-3.7 mm long, strigose to villous in lines; carpopodium small; pappus of 3-5 thin, whitish, lacerate-margined, long-acuminate scales 2-2.5 mm long. Chromosome number n = 12