Plants dwarf and woody based to shrubbby or scrambling, 20-200 cm tall, much branched; stems and branches whitish to greenish-tomentose when young, brownish and becoming glabrous with age. Leaves petiolate; petioles about 1.5 cm long; blades subrotund to very broadly ovate or broadly elliptic, 8-27 mm long, 7-20 mm wide, densely bases abruptly contracted to the petioles, tips obtuse to broadly and shallowly retuse. Inflorescences at first dense, elongating to as long as 14 cm in fruit (including the peduncles), peduncles and axes more or less densely tomentose; partial inflorescences usually with 1 feriile flower subtended on each side by a group of 3 flowers, 1 fertile and 2 sterile; sterile flowers stellately 3-branched, each branch terminating in 6-12 yellowish hooked setae up to 4.5 mm long in 3 ranks; tepals narrowly narrowly oblong-lanceolate, (6-)6.5-7.5(-8) mm long, 3-veined, densely tomentose, the inner 3 slightly shorter; styles slender, 3-4 mm long. Capsules ovoid-pyriform.
Pupalia robecchii grows on rocky limestone spurs and slopes, in acacia-Commiphora bushland, scrub along dried-upwatercourses, and on allovial plains at 90-760 m. Pupaliarobecchii was known from N1, N3, C1, C2, S1, and S2 in 1993.
Mary E. Barkworth
Plants woody-based plants varying from 20-20 cmm tall, much branched, stems and branches to whitish or greenish tomentose.
Leaves subrotund to vate or broadly elliptic, 0.8-2.7 cm long, densely tomentose to rather thinly pilose on both surfaces.
Inflorescences elongating to as mcuh as 14 cm in fruit, the axes densely tomentse; flowers in groups with 1 fertile flower, subtended on each side by a cluster of 1 fertile and 2 sterile flowers.
Sterile flowers 3-branched, each branch ending in 6-12 stiff yellowish hooks up to 4.5 mm long, fertile florets with densely tomentosetepals 6-8 mm long.
Fruits ovoid to pear-shaped capsules about 2 mm long.
Pupalia is distiguished by the hooked spines of its sterile flowers. Pupalia robecchii has karge teoaks than those of Pupalia lappacea, the other species that grows in Somaliland and Somalia.