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: BLADDER MALLOW
Habit: Annual, perennial herb. Stem: generally decumbent or trailing. Leaf: stipules inconspicuous, deciduous; lower petioled, on flower branches often +- sessile; blade cordate, ovate, dentate. Inflorescence: flowers 1--few in leaf axils; flowering stalks slender, jointed; bractlets 0. Flower: petals white to pale yellow; anthers at tip of filament tube; styles, stigmas (8)10--15, stigmas head-like. Fruit: nodding; segments (8)10--15, dehiscent, bladdery, inflated, rounded at top, side walls thin, flexible, smooth. Seed: generally glabrous, 2, 3, 6 per segment.
Etymology: (L.A.P. Herissant, French physician, naturalist, poet, 1745--1769)
eFlora Treatment Author: John C. La Duke
Unabridged Reference: Fryxell 1988 Syst Bot Monogr 25:189--192