[C. album sensu Hawaiian botanists, non L.; C. a. var. candicans sensu Hillebr., non Moq.; C. hybridum sensu Hillebr., non L.]
(nat) Aheahea
Annual herbs; stems erect or ascending, 3-10 dm long, usually many-branched, mealy pubescent especially on young parts, rarely densely so. Leaves variable, usually rhombic-ovate, 1.5-9 cm long, 0.8-5(-7) cm wide, mealy pubescent at least on lower surface, margins with 5-15 coarse, ± irregular, ascending teeth on each side. Flowers in small, dense glomerules grouped into leafy, terminal and axillary, divaricately
branched cymes up to ca. 5 cm long; calyx ca. 1 mm long, not completely enclosing the fruit at maturity, papillose and with a raised keel toward apex. Seed black, not especially shiny, horizontal, 1.2-1.5 mm in diameter, acutely keeled, the surface under high magnification marked with minute rounded pits. [2n = 18.] Probably originally native from the Mediterranean region to southwestern Asia, now a cosmopolitan weed; in Hawaii naturalized in dry, disturbed habitats, 0-2,750 m, documented from Kure and Midway atolls, French Frigate Shoals, and all of the main islands. First collected on 0‘ahu in 1864-1865 (Mann & Brigham 80, BISH).—Plate 68.