Description:

• Herbs, shrubs or trees, usually with stellate hairs, sometimes prickly or with small scales
• Leaves alternate, simple, entire to digitately lobed or partite, usually palmately veined; stipules free, usually narrow or setaceous, often deciduous
• Flowers regular, bisexual, often showy, usually pedicelled, basically in thyrses with cymose partial inflorescences, but usually solitary or fascicled in leaf axils or racemose to paniculate; with or without epicalyx of 3-many free or connate segments
• Calyx (3-)5-lobed or entire; lobes valvate
• Petals 5, free but often adnate to base of staminal tube, convolute, rarely 0
• Stamens many, hypogynous; filaments united into a staminal tube surrounding style, tube ending in 5 small teeth to truncate (tribes Malvavisceae and Hibisceae) or split at apex into many filaments (tribe Malveae); anthers 1(2)-thecous, with longitudinal slits; pollen usually spinulose
• Gynoecium superior, of 2-many, ± fused carpels with axile placentation, arranged around central persistent axis (torus or columella), with 1-many anatropous to campylotropous, bitegmic ovules, with zig-zag micropyles, in each locule/carpel; style simple, globose or club-shaped or more often branched, with branches as many or twice as many as carpels
• Fruit a loculicidal capsule or schizocarp, usually breaking into dehiscent or indehiscent carpels, rarely fleshy
• Seeds reniform, subglobose or obovoid, glabrous or hairy; cotyledons folded; endosperm oily, proteinaceous, copious to 0

Classification Notes:

• Judd & Manchester (1997), A.P.G. (1998) and Bayer et al. (1999) redefine Malvaceae to include Tiliaceae, Sterculiaceae and Bombacaceae. This results in a more clearly defined group and in the downgrading of borderline problems. Malvaceae in broad sense is divided into 9 subfamilies including Malvoideae which encompasses the present Malvaceae (in strict sense)
• See note on family circumscription under Sterculiaceae

Nomenclature:

• Malvaceae
  • Harvey: 157 (1860)
  • Exell: 420 (1960)
  • Exell: 1 (1969)
  • Exell & Gonçalves: 1 (1979)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera ± 90 genera, ± 2000 species
• Southern Africa: Genera 22 (7 exotic), species ± 165
  • The family comprises many weeds. Sporadic escapes from cultivation include *Alcea rosea L. Hollyhock, *Lagunaria patersonii G.Don, the Pyramid tree and *Malvaviscus arboreus Cav., the Wax mallow

References:

• EXELL, A.W. 1960. Malvaceae. Flora zambesiaca 1
• EXELL, A.W. 1969. Malvaceae (in part). Prodromus einer Flora von Südwestafrika 82
• EXELL, A.W. & GONÇALVES, M.L. 1979. Malvaceae. Flora de Moçambique 25: 1, index
• HARVEY, W.H. 1860. Malvaceae Juss. Flora capensis 1

Resources:

• Key to Malvaceae genera

• Malvaceae genera: