Malvastrum

• Authority

  Britton, Nathaniel L. & Millspaugh, Charles F. 1920. The Bahama Flora.

• Family

  Malvaceae

• Scientific Name

  Malvastrum

• Description

  Description - Herbs, with entire cordate or divided leaves, and solitary or racemose, short-pedicelled perfect flowers. Calyx 5-cleft. Bractlets of the involucels small, 1-3 or none. Cavities of the ovary 5-oo, 1-ovuled. Style-branches of the same number, stigmatic at the summit only, forming capitate stigmas; carpels indehiscent or imperfectly 2-valved, falling away from the axis at maturity, their apices pointed or beaked. Seed ascending. [Greek, star-mallow.] About 75 species, natives of America and S. Africa. Type species: Halvastrum coccineum (Pursh) A. Gray.