沙苦荬菜 sha ku mai cai

Prenanthes repens Linnaeus, Sp. Pl. 2: 798. 1753; Chondrilla repens (Linnaeus) Lamarck; Chorisis repens (Linnaeus) Candolle; Ixeris brachyrhyncha Nemoto; Lactuca brachyrhyncha Hayata (1919), not L. brachyrrhyncha Greenman (1899); L. repens (Linnaeus) Bentham ex Maximowicz; Nabalus repens (Linnaeus) Ledebour.

Herbs to 10 cm tall, perennial, glabrous. Stems several, flagelliform, creeping to 2 m, ± buried; nodes 2-7 cm apart, each with adventitious roots and mostly a single leaf. Leaves erect; petiole 1.5-9 cm; leaf blade broadly ovate, 1.5-3 × 1.5-5.5 cm, ± fleshy, palmatilobate, palmatipartite, or palmatisect, base attenuate, truncate, or cordate; lobes 3(-5), sessile or with a winged or unwinged petiolule to 1(-1.5) cm, elliptic to ± orbicular, base narrowed, margin mucronulately sinuate-dentate to ± entire, apex rounded to obtuse. Flowering branches from leaf axils, erect, to 10 cm, with 0 or 1 leaf similar to those of main axis but smaller, or reduced. Synflorescence laxly corymbiform, with 2-8 capitula. Capitula with 12-20 florets; peduncle wiry, 0.5-3 cm, with ovate bracts. Involucre cylindric, 10-12 × 4-5 mm at anthesis, to 1.4 cm in fruit. Phyllaries abaxially glabrous; outer phyllaries ovate to lanceolate, longest 4-6 mm, apex acute; inner phyllaries 8, apex acute. Florets yellow. Anther tube and style greenish to blackish upon drying. Achene brown, fusiform to subfusiform, 5-7 mm, apex attenuate into a moderately slender 0.5-2 mm beak. Pappus 5-6 mm. Fl. and fr. Apr-Oct. 2n = 16*.

Open sandy beaches; near sea level. Fujian, Guangdong, ?Hainan, Hebei, Jiangsu, Liaoning, Shandong, Taiwan, Zhejiang [Japan, Korea, E Russia, ?Vietnam].