2024 Edition • Get the App • Cite this Page
X

Colors

Data mode

Account

Login
Sign up

Collapse this

Support the Flora of the Southeastern US

2024 has been a banner year for making the best flora we can imagine. We've created:
With financial support from people like you, we are aiming even higher in 2025. Together we can accomplish all this: Vote on our 2025 priorities
  • Add Global Conservation Ranks (GRanks) vote
  • Professional graphic keys (polyclaves) to individual families/genera vote
  • 2 new FloraQuest apps: Florida & Mid-South vote
  • Image overlays highlighting diagnostic characters with arrows vote
  • iNaturalist integration in FloraQuest vote
Write-in vote: vote
We've set a goal of recruiting 200 ongoing supporters to donate $15 or more each month in 2025. Please help us reach this goal and make next year's flora even better:
Donate $15 per month
(0.2¢/heliophily index)
Donate $30 per month
(0.4¢/heliophily index)
Donate $50 per month
(amazing!)
Donate another
or one-time amount

Click the number at the start of a key lead to highlight both that lead and its corresponding lead. Click again to show only the two highlighted leads. Click a third time to return to the full key with the selected leads still highlighted.

Key to Malva

Copy permalink to share

1 Upper leaves deeply 5-7-lobed, the sinuses cut over halfway to the middle; petals 20-35 mm long; erect perennial
  2 Mericarps 18-20, glabrous or sparsely hairy; stem pubescence stellate; bractlets of the epicalyx densely stellate-pubescent on the lower surface
  2 Mericarps 11-15, densely hirsute at the apex; stem pubescence mainly of simple hairs; bractlets of the epicalyx glabrous on the lower surface
1 Upper leaves less deeply lobed, rarely to as deep as halfway to the middle; petals 5-30 (-45) mm long; prostrate to erect annual or biennial.
    3 Epicalyx of 3 oblong-ovate bractlets; petals reddish purple, (12-) 16-30 (-45) mm long; biennial, erect, usually not branched at the base
    3 Epicalyx of 3 linear or linear to narrowly lanceolate bractlets; petals white or pink, 3-15 mm long; annual, sprawling, usually branched at the base (except M. verticillata).
      4 Bractlets of the epicalyx linear; petals to 3-5 mm long, white to pale lilac
      4 Bractlets of the epicalyx broadly linear to narrowly lanceolate; petals (3-) 5-15 mm long, pink or purple (rarely white).
        5 Stems erect, usually > 5 dm long; leaf blades 3-8 (-17) cm long, usually prominently crisped/puckered along the margin; flowers all or mostly sessile or subsessile
        5 Stems prostrate to ascending, to 5 dm long; leaf blades 1.5-5 cm long, planar; flowers (at anthesis) mostly on pedicels longer than the calyx.
          6 Petals 6-13 mm long, about 2× as long as the sepals; mature mericarps slightly roughened or obscurely reticulate
          6 Petals 3-6 mm long, about 1× as long as the sepals; mature mericarps strongly rugose-reticulate