Hook.
[Ximenesia encelioides Cav.]
(nat) Golden crown-beard
Taprooted annual herbs; stems 2-10 dm long, many-branched. Leaves opposite, upper ones alternate, ovate or deltate, 4-15 cm long, 2-10 cm wide, both surfaces canescent-strigose, sometimes less so on upper surface, margins coarsely and often irregularly serrate, petioles dilated at base to form a pair of stipule-like auricles. Heads solitary at the ends of long peduncles or in clusters of 2-3, radiate; involucral bracts ca. 15, green, subequal, linear, 7-15 mm long; ray florets 10-15 per head, pistillate, rays bright yellow, 10-25 mm long; disk florets numerous, corollas yellow, ca. 8 mm long. Achenes winged. [2n = 34.] Native to Mexico and southwestern United States; in Hawaii naturalized and relatively common in dry, disturbed sites, 0-2,805 m, on Kure Atoll, Midway Atoll, and all of the main islands except Niihau. Naturalized prior to 1871 (Hillebrand, 1888), perhaps first on Maui.—Plate 37.