Herbs, shrubs, or soft-wooded trees, usually with tough fibrous inner bark, young parts frequently clothed with stellate hairs. Leaves stipulate, alternate, often palmately veined, entire or lobed or rarely compound. Flowers regular, hermaphrodite or rarely unisexual, often furnished at the base with a kind of involucel composed of few or many free or connate bractlets. Sepals 5, valvate, more or less united into a lobed or entire calyx, persistent. Petals 5, hypogynous, contorted in the bud. Stamens many, hypogynous; filaments united into a tube surrounding the pistil usually called the staminal column; anthers reniform, 1-celled. Ovary 2–many-celled, of 2 to many carpels whorled round a common axis; carpels either distinct or united; ovules 1 or more to each carpel, attached to the inner angle. Fruit either of dry indehiscent or dehiscent cocci, or a capsule with loculicidal dehiscence. Seeds reniform or obovoid; albumen scanty or wanting; embryo often curved, cotyledons broad, foliaceous.

A large tropical and subtropical order, less common in temperate regions, and not extending either far north or south. Genera about 60; species between page 76700 and 800. Most of the species possess mucilaginous properties, and all are quite innocuous. Many are cultivated for ornament, and one genus (Gossypium) for the woolly covering which surrounds its seeds, and which constitutes the cotton of commerce. Of the 4 following genera, Hoheria is endemic; Plagianthus is found in Australia, and Gaya in South America; while Hibiscus is universal in warm countries.

A.

Staminal column bearing anthers at the top. Carpels closely united in a ring around a central axis, from which they fall away when ripe (Malveæ). Flowers more or less unisexual. Styles with linear decurrent stigmas. Carpels usually solitary in the New Zealand species 1. Plagianthus. Flowers perfect. Stigmas capitate. Carpels several, indehiscent, winged at the back 2. Hoheria. Flowers perfect. Stigmas capitate. Carpels many, 2-valved, not winged 3. Gaya.

B.

Staminal column bearing anthers at the side, naked and 5-toothed at the top. Carpels united into a capsule, dehiscing loculicidally (Hibisceæ). Bracteoles 5 to many. Capsule 5-celled, many-seeded 4. Hibiscus.