Family Malvaceae

Family Malvaceae, commonly called the mallow family (and including the cotton plant, of major commercial importance), is a family of herbs, shrubs and occasionally small trees, most reliably recognised by a single highly diagnostic floral feature: its monadelphous androecium.

Vegetative characters. Members of Malvaceae typically have alternate, simple leaves, often palmately veined and sometimes palmately lobed, with stipules present at the leaf base. The stem and other vegetative parts frequently bear characteristic star-shaped (stellate) hairs, and mucilage (a slimy substance) is often present in various tissues.

Floral characters. The flower is actinomorphic and bisexual, typically solitary and axillary. A distinctive extra whorl called the epicalyx -- a ring of free bracteoles positioned just outside the true calyx -- is frequently present in this family and is a useful field-identification clue, though it is not, strictly, part of the flower's own four true whorls. The calyx itself has five sepals fused together at the base (gamosepalous), showing valvate aestivation. The corolla has five free (polypetalous) petals, showing twisted aestivation. The androecium is the family's single most diagnostic feature: it consists of numerous stamens whose filaments are fused together into a single elongated tube, called the staminal column, which surrounds the style; the anthers themselves, however, remain free at the top of this column, and are typically kidney-shaped and one-celled (monothecous) -- this fusion-of-filaments-only condition is called monadelphous. The gynoecium is multicarpellary (formed of several carpels) and syncarpous (the carpels fused together), with a superior ovary showing axile placentation, and a single style that branches at its tip into as many stigmas as there are carpels, corresponding to the tips of the staminal column's core.

Fruit. The fruit is typically a capsule, or in some genera a schizocarp that splits into separate one-seeded segments at maturity. …