Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Abutilon theophrasti

Flower and leaves. Photographer I Sacek snr, Czech Republic

Plant. Photographer John Hilty, Illinois, USA

Line drawing in Britton, N.L., and A. Brown. 1913 An illustrated flora of the northern United States, Canada and the British Possessions

Line drawing of fruiting stem. GRM Dashorst, State Herbarium of South Australia, © 2021 Royal Botanic Gardens Board, Melbourne

Common name

Chingma Lantern

Family

Malvaceae

Where found

Stream banks, margins of shallowly inundated areas, and swampy areas. Western Slopes.

Notes

Introduced annual herb to 1 m tall.  'Seeds' with distinct awns. Stems hairy with stiff stellate hairs (needs a hand lens or a macro app on your phone/tablet to see), and sticky. Leaves alternating up the stems, 1.5-30 cm long, 15–160 mm wide, almost round, hairy, margins entire or toothed, bases often cordate, tips abruptly drawn out to a point. Flowers yellow to orange, with 5 petals each 7–8.5 mm long. Flowers single or in clusters.

PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Abutilon~theophrasti   (accessed 3 April, 2021)