Duration: Perennial
Nativity: Native
Lifeform: Forb/Herb
General: Perennial herb, 40-140 cm tall, from a woody caudex; stems few to several per plant; herbage more or less canescent with gray or white stellate hairs.
Leaves: Alternate along the stems, on petioles; blades 2-6 cm long, narrowly to broadly ovate and shallowly to deeply 3-lobed, with the lateral lobes about 1/4 as long as the mid-lobe, and most of the lobes coarsely toothed near the tip.
Flowers: Bright orange to pink, in narrow panicles; sepals 5, triangular or ovate-lanceolate, 5-6 mm long, fused together for the lower half, and uniformly stellate-hairy; petals 5, red-orange or less commonly rose-pink and drying purple, 8-15 mm long.
Fruits: Schizocarps splitting into 11-15 single seeded carpels, these 4-5 mm high, faintly and finely reticulate on the sides near the base.
Ecology: Found in pine-oak forests and juniper woodlands, from 3,000-8,000 ft (914-2438 m); flowers July-September.
Distribution: AZ, NM, s CO, w TX; south to MEX.
Notes: S. fendleri is notable in that it most often has red-orange flowers, but can also have light pink-purple flowers. The leaves are 3-lobed, with the lobes on the sides much shorter, about 1/4 as long as the middle lobe. In the Flora Neomexicana (Allred and Ivey 2012) this species is placed in the section of the key with "leaves deeply lobed more than halfway to the midrib." However, in reality this species is variable in how deeply lobed the leaves are; many herbarium specimens have shallowly lobed leaves, which are divided a little less than halfway to the midrib. Also distinguished by being sparsely hairy, with the herbage appearing green rather than white- or yellow- canescent. Widespread in NM and in AZ, above 3,000 ft. Sphaeralcea spp. can be tricky to tell apart, and the key characteristics are often on the mature fruits, which are small and cheese-wheel shaped, and split apart like the segments of an orange. It is best to make a quality collection with mature fruits for identification.
Ethnobotany: Used to treat sand cricket bites; an infusion of the plant was taken for mouth sores and for internal injury and hemorrhage; also made into a lotion to treat external injuries.
Etymology: Sphaeralcea is from the Greek sphaira, a globe, and alcea, the hollyhock genus (a type of mallow); fendleri honors Augustus Fendler (1813-1883), a Prussian-born American natural history collector.
Synonyms: Sphaeralcea leiocarpa
Editor: LCrumbacher 2011, AHazelton 2017
