Description:

• Annual to weakly perennial herbs, erect to prostrate
• Leaves simple, undivided to palmately lobed, mostly ± suborbicular-reniform in outline
• Flowers axillary, solitary or in few-flowered clusters, small to medium-sized; pedicels short to ± absent
• Epicalyx of 3 free bracts sometimes partly fused to base of calyx, usually shorter than calyx
• Calyx cupular to rotate
• Petals ± equalling to twice as long as calyx, emarginate to deeply notched, white, mauve or purple, never yellow
• Staminal tube shorter than petals, divided at apex into many very short filaments
• Gynoecium of 7-16, 1-seeded carpels; style branches as many as carpels, filiform, stigmatic surface decurrent on adaxial side
• Fruit a discoid schizocarp with a depressed centre, separating into 7-16, 1-seeded, reniform, laterally flattened, awnless, indehiscent mericarps with reticulately ridged to almost smooth, glabrous to pubescent walls
• Seeds reniform, glabrous
• x = 7 (8, 10, 12) (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Malva L.
  • Linnaeus: 687 (1753)
  • Harvey: 159 (1860)
  • Meeuse: 501 (1960)
  • Henderson & Anderson: 212 (1966)
  • Roessler: 24 (1969)
  • Ray: 29 (1995)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 30, temperate and subtropical Old World and New World (Ray 1995), several cosmopolitan weeds, some cultivated ornamentals
• Southern Africa: Species 7, widespread
  • In Africa the genus is perhaps only truly native in the Mediterranean region