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Perennial herb, much-branched with usually weak and slender branches, scrambling over other vegetation or prostrate and more or less matted, 0.6–1.4 m. (and probably more); stems thinly pilose and terete-striate, the upper part and branches more densely pilose or lanate, more or less tetragonous with pale angles above, purplish to green, nodes somewhat swollen. Leaves 1.7–7.5 × 1–4 cm; of highly characteristic shape, spathulate with the broadest part of the lamina abruptly narrowed above to a short, acute to rather blunt apex, and narrowed below to a broad claw which contracts abruptly into a short, 1–5 mm. long, usually densely pilose petiole; upper leaf surface darker with scattered long hairs and usually rather few short hairs, lower surface paler with long hairs along the primary venation and usually more plentiful shorter and finer hairs between. Inflorescences of dense heads (condensed cymes) terminal on the stem and branches, white-woolly or greenish, solitary or in a thyrse of up to 6 heads, each head c. 1–1.5 cm. in diam. at anthesis, subsessile or on a peduncle up to c.5 mm. long; bracts broadly cordate-ovate, ciliate, whitish-membranous, c.3–4 mm. long, distinctly (usually brownish) aristate with the excurrent midrib; bracteoles lanceolate, c.4–5 mm. long, with long multicellular hairs at least along the margins and dorsal surface of midrib, which is excurrent in a brownish arista; ultimate divisions of the inflorescence of a central fertile flower subtended on each side by a triad of one fertile and two lateral modified flowers. Outer 2 tepals oblong-elliptic to Ungulate, 5–6 mm., moderately to densely furnished with long, soft, white multicellular hairs, with broad hyaline margins and a green central band with a pair of veins on each side of the shortly excurrent midrib; inner 3 tepals scarcely shorter, glabrous or at least less densely pilose than the outer, wider, more narrowly hyaline-margined, the usually single pair of lateral nerves anastomosing into a reticulum above. Modified flowers scarcely visible as more than a minute bud at anthesis, rapidly accrescent, of mostly 4–6 bracteoliform and spiniform processes, all with uncinate apices, the outer with short, broad, hyaline bases; very reduced innermost processes also present. Stamens finally subequalling or c. three quarters the length of the tepals, filaments slender; pseudostaminodes c. 1–1.5 mm., oblong to flabellate, finely lanate along the margins and across the back, with a short incurved ventral scale. Style slender, c.3–3.5 mm.; ovary obovoid-pyriform, c.0.75 mm., thickened above. Capsule c. 3 mm., oblong ellipsoid, firm; seed c. 2.75 mm., oblong-ellipsoid, brown, almost smooth, “burr” spherical, very prehensile, c. 1.5–3 cm. in diam., including the spines.