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Electronic Flora of South Australia family Fact Sheet

Malvaceae

Alternative names: Not Applicable

Description:
Trees, shrubs or herbs; leaves alternate or fascicled, usually petiolate, stipulate, with pinnate or palmate venation, usually with stellate hairs, less often with simple hairs or peltate scales.

Flowers regular, bisexual or unisexual (plants dioecious), arranged in apparent panicles, racemes, spikes, or solitary; epicalyx of 0-11 segments; calyx of 5 fused valvate sepals; petals 5, free, contorted in bud; stamens numerous, united in a tube surrounding the ovary and usually adnate to the base of the petals; anthers 1-celled; ovary superior, 3-20- or more-celled, with 1 or a few amphitropous or half-anatropous ovules in each cell; styles united at least towards their base, with capitate or decurrent stigmas.

Fruit either a loculicidal capsule or separating septicidally into as many laterally compressed fruitlets (mericarps) as there are carpels in the ovary and leaving the persistent central axis; seeds with little endosperm, with a crustaceous testa; cotyledons broad and folded several times; radicle inferior or superior.

Distribution:  About 85 genera and 2,000 species in most parts of the world; about 25 genera and 160 species in Australia.

Biology: No text

Key to Genera:
1. Fruit a capsule
 
2. Epicalyx present
 
3. Epicalyx longer than the calyx
GOSSYPIUM 4.
3. Epicalyx as long as or shorter than the calyx
 
4. Herbs or shrubs with stellate hairs; epicalyx segments 4-10
 
5. Epicalyx segments or lobes linear or triangular
 
6. Style simple, with 5 capitate stigmas
ALYOGYNE 3.
6. Style divided, the 5 capitate stigmas on distinct style branches.
HIBISCUS 6.
5. Epicalyx segments spathulate
RADYERA 16.
4. Trees with peltate scales; epicalyx segments 3-5
LAGUNARIA 8.
2. Epicalyx 0
HOWITTIA 7.
1. Fruit a schizocarp
 
7. Epicalyx present
 
8. Styles twice as many as the carpels
PAVONIA 15.
8. Styles equal in number to the carpels
 
9. Epicalyx segments 5-11
ALCEA 2.
9. Epicalyx segmens 3
 
10. Stigmas capitate
 
11. Flowers in spikes
MALVASTRUM 12.
11. Flowers on axillary peruncles
 
12. Flowers cream-coloured
MALVELLA 13.
12. Flowers orange to red
MODIOLA 14.
10. Stigmas decurrent along style branches
 
13. Epicalyx segments fused
LAVATERA 9.
13. Epicalyx segments free
MALVA 11.
7. Epicalyx absent
 
14. Flowers in panicles
GYNATRIX 5.
14. Flowers axillary or in spikes or racemes
 
15. Stigmas decurrent on the style branches
LAWRENCIA 10.
15. Stigmas capirate
 
16. Ovules 2 or more in each carpel
ABUTILON 1.
16. Ovule 1 in each carpel
SIDA 17.

Author: Prepared by J.P. Jessop except as indicated


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