Cuscuta lehmanniana A. Bunge

Host: Artemisia

This species is very close to Cuscuta reflexa, but it can be separated from the latter by having a capsule which is cartilaginous and circumscissile with a definite line of cleavage.

Stem coarse, brown, making a few spirals around the host stem, not interlaced. Leaves 2.5-3 x 1.5-2 mm, elliptical, fleshy, entire, or dentate, with a few folds, cup shaped obtuse or acute-obtuse. Flowers in cymes, 3-8 mm long; pedicel 0.5-7 mm long, papillate. Bract leaf-like, calyx lobes 5, 2.5-3 x 2-2.2 mm, mostly reaching, the middle of corolla, ovate, obtuse or acute-obtuse, entire, or dentate, broadly overlapping mostly with an uneven median carina which may end in an acute point at the tip of the lobe, fleshy with slightly membranous edges, 2-2.2 mm wide, c. 0.5 mm long. Corolla lobes 5, 1.5-2 mm long, spathulate-oblong or ovate-orbicular, fleshy, entire, with reticulate pattern, rarely with a few folds, spotted with glands or granulated by projecting cells, upper part of the lobes are more darker than lower part; scales scarious, c. 1 mm long, closely adnate to petals, abundantly fringed, c,1 mm long. Stamen 5, filament obsolete, fused filament prominent in the petals; anther oblong, dark brown, basifixed, 0.8-1.0 mm long. Ovary globose or ± conical, fleshy not depressed; style dark brown short, c. 0.2 mm long and wide; stigma dark brown, oval-elongated, c. 0.2 mm long and wide; ovule 4, ± reniform, c. 1 mm broad. Capsule 4-5 x 3.3-4 mm, globose, ovoid or bell-shaped, circumscissile with a definite line, ± cartilaginous, without intra stylar opening, leaving the ovate dissepiment in the calyx, dissepiment, with withered corolla carried at the apex. Seeds 4, ovoid, rostrate, brown-black, ± glossy, 2.2-2.5 x 2-2.4 mm.

Distribution: Pakistan (Chitral) Kashmir, Russia (Samarkand, Bokhara, Turk¬estan), China (Chinese Turkestan).