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Botanical Description

Dense to loosely cushion-forming shrublet, 2-30cm tall, often half buried, with prominent, ebony-coloured, one to three dichotomous spines at the branch tips. Leaves 5-15mm long, with seven to nine narrowly elliptical, folded downy leaflets, mainly in tufts on brief lateral shoots just below the naked spines. Inflorescences from the same shoots, the flowers 5-8mm long, yellow, in clusters, summer. Lomenta formed of one to five bristly segments. Chile and Argentina, from the high Atacama to the central cordilleras in flattish dry stony slopes of loose soil at 2800-4000m.