Citation: Domin, Biblthca Bot. 89:623 (1921).

Synonymy: Not Applicable

Common name: Five-spined bassia, black (or prickly) roly-poly.

Description:
Rounded annual or perennial to 1 m high, intricately and divaricately branched, glabrous to villous or woolly; leaves flat, linear to narrow-oblong or elliptic, 5-15 rarely to 25 mm long.

Flowers solitary, glabrous to villous or minutely woolly; stamens 4.

Fruiting perianth hard, glabrous to villous or minutely woolly; base truncate, very oblique, circular; tube very shortly cylindrical, c. 2 mm high and wide, steeply ascending, rounded at the apex; spines 3 + 2 or 3 + 1, 2 lateral, 1 abaxial, and a short adaxial radicular pair (or sometimes only 1 of the pair developed), the abaxial and lateral spines 5-10 mm long, the radicular spines 1-2 mm long; seed oblique to horizontal.

Conservation status: native Flowering time: No flowering time is available

SA Distribution Map based on current data relating to specimens held in the State Herbarium of South Australia

Biology: No text

Taxonomic notes: The following varieties evidently grade into each other.

Key to Infraspecific taxa:

1. Plant glabrous or almost so; leaves linear to very narrow-oblong	var. muricata 26a.
1. Plant variously pubescent
2. Leaves and branches sparsely appressed-hirsute; leaves narrowly elliptic to elliptic	var. semiglabra 26b.
2. Branches minutely woolly, leaves vil1ous, flat, linear to very narrowly elliptic	var. villosa 26c.

Author: Not yet available