Biennial herb with a slender to somewhat incrassate and narrowly subtuberous root, 16–150 cm. tall.. Stem terete, slender, wiry, finely striate, sometimes tinged with red, glabrous (in East Africa) to somewhat pilose with ± deflexed white hairs.. Leaves very variable in form and size; basal leaves simple, ovate or deltoid-ovate, cordate to truncate at the base, acute or obtuse, regularly dentate with mucronate teeth, or palmatisect or pinnate with 1–2 pairs of broadly ovate or deltoid-ovate, acute or obtuse, dentate to pinnatipartite leaflets, the lower pair often shortly (to ± 5 mm.) petiolulate; petiole slender, 3–8 cm. including the narrow, striate, tapering, membranous-margined, 1–2.5 cm. sheath; median stem leaves similar or more commonly more deeply and narrowly divided, more shortly petiolate; upper leaves much reduced, narrowly divided with linear and entire or narrowly and sharply toothed segments, sessile on the sheaths; all leaves subglabrous on the upper surface to rather thinly pilose beneath, varying to ± glabrous on both sides or moderately hairy on the lower surface and thinly so above.. Umbels nodding when young, of ± 10–22 rays, the rays glabrous or with scattered rather long, white, patent hairs, rarely moderately pilose, ± 1–4 cm. long, erect or ± incurved in the upper 1/3(–1/2) in fruit; involucre 0; partial umbels ± 14–26-flowered; pedicels 1.5–5 mm., closing together in fruit, indumentum similar to that of the rays or with scattered spreading whitish hairs even when the rays are glabrous; involucel 0; peduncles 3–8 cm., indumentum similar to that of the stem.. Calyx absent.. Petals white, ± 0.75–1 mm., sparingly or more densely furnished with long white hairs on the basal and central dorsal surface, univittate.. Ovary densely furnished with rather stiff, upwardly appressed (rarely somewhat spreading) white hairs.. Fruit broadly ovoid, laterally compressed, ± 1.25–1.5 mm., ± densely furnished with rather stiff, upwardly appressed and frequently curved white hairs; stylopodia mamillose or very shortly conical, abruptly narrowed to the style, purplish to yellow, disk ± undulate-margined; styles ± deflexed, slender, exceeding the stylopodia, to ± 0.75 mm., generally purplish, occasionally yellow.
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