PLANT: Annual or perennial herbs or shrubs, variously pubescent to glabrate.

LEAVES: linear, lanceolate, ovate, hastately lobed, or palmately divided, usually reduced upward.

FLOWERS: in racemes or panicles, sometimes solitary in the leafaxils; involucel absent; calyx 5-lobed; petals yellow, lavender, or bluish-purple; stamens usually numerous; pistil 5-19-carpelled, with as many styles, the stigmas capitate.

FRUIT: schizocarpic, oblate or disk-shaped, puberulent to hispid; mericarps 5-19, often with a spur or spine at dorsal angle, the lateral walls disintegrating at maturity.

SEEDS: solitary, sometimes enclosed in a reticulate endocarp.

NOTES: 23 spp., principally from Mexico and the sw U.S., with one weedy species also occurring to S. Amer. and elsewhere. (Ceylonese vernacular name, anoda, originally given to a species of Abutilon). Fryxell, P. A. 1987. Aliso 11:485-522.

REFERENCES: Fryxell, Paul A. 1994. Malvaceae. J. Ariz. - Nev. Acad. Sci. Volume 27(2), 222-236.

Much like Sida, but the lateral walls separating the carpels eventually obliterated. 10, warm New World.

Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.

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