Common Name: MALLOW FAMILY
Habit: Annual to tree; generally with stellate hairs, often with bristles or peltate scales; juice generally mucilage-like; bark fibrous. Leaf: generally cauline, alternate, petioled, simple [palmate-compound], generally palmate-lobed and/or veined, generally toothed, evergreen or not; stipules persistent or not. Inflorescence: head, spike, raceme, or panicle, in panicle or not (a compound panicle), or flowers >= 1 in leaf axils, or flowers generally 1 opposite a leaf or on a spur; bracts leaf-like or not; bractlets 0 or on flowering stalks, often closely subtending calyx, generally in involucel. Flower: generally bisexual, radial; sepals 5, generally fused at base, abutting in bud, larger in fruit or not, nectaries as tufts of glandular hairs at base; petals (0)5, free from each other but generally fused at base to, falling with filament tube, clawed or not; stamens 5--many, filaments fused for most of length into tube around style, staminodes 5, alternate stamens, or generally 0; pistil 1, ovary superior, stalked or generally not, chambers generally >= 5, styles or style branches, stigmas generally 1 or 1--2 × chamber number. Fruit: loculicidal capsule, [berry], or 5--many, disk- or wedge-shaped segments (= mericarps).
Genera In Family: 266 genera, 4025 species: worldwide, especially warm regions; some cultivated (e.g., Abelmoschus okra; Alcea hollyhock; Gossypium cotton; Hibiscus hibiscus). Note: Recently treated to include Bombacaceae, Sterculiaceae, Tiliaceae. Mature fruit needed for identification; "outer edges" are surfaces between sides and back (abaxial surface) of segment. "Flower stalk" used instead of "pedicel," "peduncle," especially where both needed (i.e., when flowers both 1 in leaf axils and otherwise).
eFlora Treatment Author: Steven R. Hill, except as noted
Scientific Editor: Steven R. Hill, Thomas J. Rosatti.

Common Name: HIBISCUS
Habit: Annual, perennial herb, subshrub [shrub, tree]. Stem: generally erect, bristly or stellate-hairy to +- glabrous. Leaf: generally simple, cordate, palmate-lobed or -divided or not, +- entire to dentate or crenate-dentate, palmate-veined, tip acute or acuminate; stipules generally persistent. Inflorescence: raceme, open, or flowers 1 in leaf axils; flowering stalks often jointed in upper 1/3; bractlets 8--10(20), free or basally fused, generally narrow, persistent. Flower: generally showy, open <= 1 day; calyx 5-lobed; petals white, yellow, lavender, red, or other colors, often with dark basal spot; filament tube 5-toothed at tip, anthers scattered on upper 1/2 below tip; style distally 5-branched, stigmas head-like. Fruit: capsule loculicidal, 5-chambered, ovoid or oblong, glabrous or hairy. Seed: several per chamber, hairy or +- glabrous.
Etymology: (Greek: hibiscos, a name for a mallow) Note: Other taxa, such as Hibiscus syriacus L., rose-of-Sharon, cultivated, possibly escaped.
eFlora Treatment Author: Steven R. Hill
Unabridged Reference: Fryxell 1988 Syst Bot Monogr 25:192--232