Perennial herb 30–120 cm long or high or scrambling to 180 cm, erect or with the lower stem prostrate and rooting at the nodes, sending up erect branches, sometimes clambering through other plants; stems green or streaked or tinged with purplish, red or brownish-red, glabrous to densely setulose with red hairs. Leaves obovate, oblanceolate, elliptic, lanceolate or ovate, sometimes distinctly pinnately or pinnato-lyrately 2–8-lobed in lower half, 3–15.5 cm long, 0.5–9 cm wide, sessile or cuneate to attenuate into a usually auriculate petioloid base, margins sinuate-dentate or sinuate-serrate to deeply sinuate-lobulate, especially towards the base, apex obtuse to acute, sometimes somewhat attenuate, pubescent, sometimes also setulose on veins beneath, sometimes ± glabrescent. Capitula 1–5, terminal, lax, discoid, long-stalked; stalks of the individual capitula pubescent; involucre cylindrical, 9–13 mm long, 4–8 mm in diameter, the base wide and truncate; bracts of calyculus linear to lanceolate, 8–15, dark-tipped, 2.5–8 mm long, pubescent or at least ciliate-margined; phyllaries 13–27, usually 21, green with purplish or brownish tips, 8–13 mm long, pubescent or densely glandular, sometimes with the hairs tinged purplish, or rarely glabrous. Disc florets very many, yellow, orange-yellow or orange; corolla 7.2–11.5 mm long, tube glabrous, gradually expanded above the middle, lobes 0.7–1.7 mm long. Achenes 1.5–2.5 mm long, ribbed, shortly hairy between the ribs; pappus 7–12 mm long. Fig. 127 (page 605).
