Description :

• Annual or perennial herbs, suffrutices or shrublets
• Leaves mostly simple and unlobed, rarely deeply lobed to divided, usually cuneate to cordate at base
• Flowers mostly axillary, solitary to clustered, sometimes, by abortion of upper leaves, in racemes or panicles; pedicels usually articulated
• Epicalyx 0
• Calyx mostly shallowly campanulate, often angular
• Petals forming a rotate corolla; cream to orange, rarely white
• Staminal tube usually shorter than petals, divided at apex into many free filaments; anthers reniform
• Gynoecium of 5-12, 1-ovulate carpels; style branches as many as carpels, filiform; stigmas capitate to truncate
• Fruit a schizocarp with 5-12, ± 3-angled mericarps with 2 awns or awnless at apex, indehiscent or partially dehiscent, glabrous or hairy, eventually falling away from slender columella
• Seeds ± 3-angled
• x = 7 (6, 8, 11, 17) (polyploidy, B-chromosomes)

Nomenclature:

• Sida L.
  • Linnaeus: 683 (1753)
  • Harvey: 166 (1860)
  • Meeuse: 475 (1960)
  • Henderson & Anderson: 216 (1966)
  • Roessler: 29 (1969)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ±150, cosmopolitan in tropics and subtropics, especially the Americas; several pantropical weeds
• Southern Africa : Species 11, widespread; mostly in open, sunny situations from semidesert to forest margins; some species introduced