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.

Habit: [Subshrub], shrub, densely stellate-tomentose or -scabrous. Stem: erect. Leaf: petiole stout; blade lanceolate to +- round or cordate, +- entire or irregularly fine-toothed; stipules 2--5 mm. Inflorescence: axillary racemes clustered terminally or flowers 1 in leaf axils [panicle]; bractlets 0. Flower: petals white, yellow, blue-lavender, rose, or pink; anthers at tip of filament tube; styles 6--11, > anthers, stigmas head-like. Fruit: +- glabrous; segments 6--12, below indehiscent, firm, net-veined, above dehiscent, with 2 spreading, scarious wings. Seed: 1--3 per segment, puberulent or minutely ridged.
Etymology: (F.H. Horsford, Vermont botanist, collector, 1855--1923)
eFlora Treatment Author: John C. La Duke
Unabridged Reference: Fryxell 1985 Syst Bot 10:268--272; Fryxell 1988 Syst Bot Monogr 25:234--240