Description:

• Annual or perennial herbs, undershrubs, shrubs, rarely small trees
• Leaves simple, lobed or digitately compound
• Flowers usually solitary, axillary or forming terminal racemes or corymbs by reduction of upper leaves, often showy; pedicels usually articulated
• Epicalyx of (0)5-20 bracts
• Calyx 5-lobed or sometimes 5- or 10-toothed, persistent
• Petals mostly much longer than calyx, often yellow with dark purple base, or red, pink, purplish or white
• Staminal tube ± truncate at apex, bearing anthers throughout or only in upper half
• Gynoecium 4- or 5-locular, with 3-many ovules per locule; style branches as many as carpels, filiform; stigmas usually discoid, sometimes capitate
• Fruit a loculicidally dehiscent capsule
• Seeds globose or reniform, glabrous or hairy
• x = 12 (10, 11, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19) (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Hibiscus L.
  • Linnaeus: 693 (1753) name conserved
  • Harvey: 170 (1860)
  • Exell: 434 (1960)
  • Henderson & Anderson: 210 (1966)
  • Exell: 10 (1969)
  • Roessler: 11 (1985)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 300, cosmopolitan in tropics and subtropics, rare in temperate zone
• Southern Africa: Species more than 50, widespread, but poorly represented in Western Cape