Description:
|
Spreading or scrambling shrub or even a small tree, mostly up to 3 m high, armed with straight or slightly recurved prickles 3–7 mm long; hairs stellate. Branches whitish to rusty heiry, becoming hairless, with scattered prickles. Leaves somewhat felty, broadly ovate, ovate-rhombic or more or less elliptic, 4.5–15 cm long, usually sinuate to lobed, the lobes up to 7, broadly angular or somewhat triangular to rounded, acute to rounded, pubescent to scabrous above, lower surface paler and, densely greyish-white or rusty-yellow hairy beneath, unarmed or with a few straight prickles on the nerves beneath; petiole 0.8–3.8 cm long. Inflorescences lateral, leaf-remote, axillary or extra-axillary, but more or less erect and generally borne above the leaf canopy, 1.5–3 cm across, few to many-flowered, generally maturing numerous fruits. Flowers 5-merous; pedicels 5–10 mm long, slender, glandular-pubescent or hispid-viscid, in fruit elongated to 20 mm, becoming stout and somewhat thickened distally. Calyx green or purplish, 3–4 mm long, 5–6 mm across, cup-shaped, often deeply lobed, glandular-pubescent; lobes unequal, ovate or triangular to lanceolate, 1.5–2.5 mm long, larger in fruit. Corolla white or occasionally pale lilac, mostly c. 2 cm across; lobes ovate-lanceolate or lanceolate, 4–6 mm long and wide, undulate at the margins, hairy outside on the median region, more or less hairy inside. Fruits globose, 8–15 mm in diameter, greenish, turning yellowish, drab yellow or dirty-brown when ripe. |