Malvaceae

Deciduous trees and non-woody (herbaceous) annuals, biennials or perennials often producing a gluey juice; usually with star-shaped hairs, and with stalks of the stamens fused into a tube around the pistil.

Leaves alternate, simple, sometimes lobed, usually stalked, spiral, or in two vertical rows on opposite sides of the stem; leaf veins usually radiating from the base of the leaf like fingers on a hand (palmate); stipules present, sometimes falling off early.

Flowers at the top of the stem and the ends of branches, or in leaf axils; solitary, or forming cymes, umbels, racemes, spikes or panicles. Each flower usually producing both pollen and seeds and usually radially symmetrical. Sepals 5, separate or fused at the base, usually persistent, sometimes enlarging and becoming inflated in fruit; often with a set of small sepal-like bracts immediately below the sepals. Petals 5, often showy, separate, fused to the base of the stamen tube. Stamens many. Carpels 5-many, fused to form 1 pistil; ovary located above point of attachment of other flower parts (superior); style 1, sometimes dividing into 5-25 branches. Fruit round and nut like, in clusters on a long stalk with a long narrow leafy bract; or capsules. Capsules often break into pie piece-shaped segments.