Annual, biennial or perennial herbs or shrubs. Leaves simple and palmately lobed or digitately compound. Flowers usually solitary and axillary, but often forming terminal inflorescences by reduction of the upper leaves, yellow with a dark
centre or red, pink, purplish or white. Epicalyx of 5-20 bracts, rarely 0. Calyx with 5 lobes or (rarely) 5-10 teeth.
Ovary 4-5-locular; each loculus with 3-many ovules. Style 5-branched. Fruit a loculicidally dehiscent capsule. Derivation of name: Greek name for the marsh mallow Worldwide: c.300 species occurring in warm temperate and tropical areas of the world Mozambique: 1 cultivated taxon. The larvae of the following species of insect eat species of this genus: |