Habit: Annual, perennial herb; with taproot, clustered fleshy roots, caudex, adventitious roots, or occasionally shallow rhizome.
Stem: +- decumbent or generally erect, some occasionally stolon-like; erect stem, branches terminating in inflorescence.
Leaf: generally fewer above, occasionally +- rosetted; petioles below generally >> petioles above; blades below generally crenate to shallowly lobed, blades above often deeply palmate-lobed or -divided; stipules generally persistent.
Inflorescence: head, spike, or raceme, in panicle or not, generally more open in fruit; bracts 2, generally stipule-like, occasionally involucre-like, united at base to +- entirely; bractlets 0(3), generally not in involucel.
Flower: flowers generally bisexual, protandrous, occasionally functionally unisexual (occasionally, plants with either bisexual or pistillate flowers in a given sp.); calyx lobes >= tube; petals spreading or erect, purple or rose-pink to white, generally with some pale veins, base generally also paler than tips (occasionally darker), tip +- notched or fringed, petals on pistillate flowers shorter, darker, often <= 10 mm; filament tube generally stellate-puberulent, anthers near top, in generally 2 concentric series, generally pink, +- purple, or white; stigmas linear, on inner side of style branches, conspicuous in pistillate flowers.
Fruit: segments generally 5--10, indehiscent, puberulent, glandular, or glabrous, beaked or not, side walls generally +- thin.
Seed: 1, generally filling chamber, reniform, glabrous.
Species In Genus: +- 27 species: western North America: Alaska, Canada, to Mexico.
Etymology: (Greek: combination of
Sida,
Alcea, 2 other names for mallows)
Note: Some species highly variable, especially in leaves, growth stage; mature plants with fruit minimize considerable problems in identification, as does knowledge of plant base, underground parts; needs study.
Unabridged Note: This treatment differs from that in TJM (1993) in addition of new taxa and in segregation as species of former, primarily inland subspecies of Sidalcea malviflora, now primarily a coastal entity.Jepson eFlora Author: Steven R. Hill
Reference: Andreasen & Baldwin 2003 Amer J Bot 90:436--444; Hill 2008 J Bot Res Inst Texas 2:783--791
Unabridged Reference: Hitchcock 1957 Univ Washington Publ Biol 18:1--96; Fryxell 1988 Syst Bot Monogr 25:412--416Index of California Plant Names (ICPN; linked via the Jepson Online Interchange)Key to Sidalcea
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