PLANTS: Perennial herbs or shrubs, procumbent, ascending, or erect, sparsely pubescent.

LEAVES: suborbicular, ovate, or lanceolate, crenate or serrate.

FLOWERS: solitary in the leafaxils; involucel absent; calyx deeply 5-lobed, pentangular, accrescent and inflated in fruit; petals yellowish, slightly exceeding to twice as long as calyx.

FRUITS: schizocarpic, oblate, blackish, glabrous; mericarps 8-14, indurate, indehiscent, with long obtuse rostrum or beak, notably reticulate-veined laterally.

SEEDS: solitary, minutely pubescent.

NOTES: 2 spp., one Bolivian, the other disjunct between Argentina and adjacent areas and n Mex. and sw U.S. (Greek rhynchos = beak + generic name Sida). Fryxell, P. A. 1978. Brittonia 30:447-462.

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