Description :

• Annual or perennial herbs
• Leaves palmately lobed or divided (rarely almost entire)
• Flowers solitary, axillary or in terminal racemes by reduction of upper leaves
• Epicalyx of 6-many filiform or linear bracts or much reduced and early caducous
• Calyx thin, splitting laterally, circumscissile, slightly joined to base of corolla and deciduous with it
• Petals yellow with dark purple-brown base
• Staminal tube ± truncate at apex
• Gynoecium 5-locular, with many ovules per locule; style not manifestly branched, with 5 sessile or subsessile capitate stigmas
• Capsule elongated, oblong or ellipsoid
• Seeds with minute stellate hairs, sometimes also pilose
• x = very variable

Nomenclature:

• *Abelmoschus Medik.
  • Medikus: 45 (1787)
  • Exell: 423 (1960)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 15, Old World
• Southern Africa : Species 1: * Abelmoschus esculentus (L.) Moench (Okra or Lady's finger), cultivated in tropics and subtropics for its edible young fruits; may appear as an escape