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Herbaceous to suffruticose annual or biennial up to c. 1·5 m. tall, branched from the base and densely covered with a yellowish stellate indumentum; stems subterete, ultimately glabrescent and closely marked with short linear-rhombic shallow grooves. Leaf-lamina up to 8 (12) × 8 (12) cm., broadly ovate- to suborbicular-cordate, acute or obtuse or somewhat acuminate, upper surface deep yellowish-green; rugose-scabrid (rough to the touch) and thinly stellate-pubescent, lower surface paler and softly tomentose, margin finely and rather regularly (sometimes indistinctly) crenate or dentate; petiole about as long as the corresponding lamina. Flowers solitary in the axils of upper leaves of main stems; pedicels up to 8 (10) cm. long, terete, articulated in the upper 11 mm. Calyx cupuliform, 16–19 mm. long, lobed to about the middle; lobes triangular or ovate-triangular, acute, often mucronate, usually distinctly mid-veined, finely and densely ciliate, accrescent and ultimately equalling or slightly exceeding the ripe fruit. Petals c. 18 mm. long, yellow, obovate, glabrous except near the base. Staminal tube glabrous or with tufts of stellate hairs at the line of fusion with the petals. Fruit c. 15 × 20 mm., very densely pilose, depressed-globose, truncate to shallowly umbilicate at the apex; mericarps c. 20, their outer apical angle produced into a triangular-acuminate point or somewhat awned, densely pilose to bearded on the back and upper half of the flat sides, (2) 3-seeded. Seeds c. 3 × 2–5 mm., glabrous, often minutely rugulose-verrucose.