Description:

• Herbs, suffrutices or shrubs, mostly erect, often softly tomentose
• Leaves simple, usually ± ovate, often cordate, usually long-petioled
• Flowers axillary, solitary or fascicled; pedicels usually articulated
• Epicalyx 0
• Calyx ± campanulate
• Petals much longer than calyx, generally orange to yellow, rarely white
• Staminal tube shorter than petals, divided at apex into many filaments, dilated towards base, ± glabrous to stellately hairy
• Gynoecium: carpels 5-40, each with (1)2 ovules; style branches as many as carpels, filiform; stigmas capitate
• Fruit a subglobose to cylindrical to almost disc-shaped schizocarp, often with depressed centre, of 5-40 laterally compressed, follicular 1-3(-9)-seeded mericarps with rounded, truncate, acute or awned apex and ventral side usually with a distinct tooth, originally fitting over top of torus; after separation mericarps often remaining pendulous on a basal carpophore
• Seeds reniform, glabrous to sparsely stellate-tomentose
• x = 7 (8, 9) (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Abutilon Mill.
  • Miller: [23] (1754)
  • Harvey: 168 (1860)
  • Meeuse: 484 (1960)
  • Roessler: 1 (1969)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 100 or more, cosmopolitan in tropics and subtropics
• Southern Africa: Species 22, only 1 in winter-rainfall area; mostly in sunny, relatively dry, open situations; some pantropical weeds; some forms cultivated for their decorative flowers