PLANTS: Perennial herbs or subshrubs, erect or prostrate, glabrous or pubescent, sometimes viscid. LEAVES: ovate (sometimes lobed), elliptic, rhombic, or linear, usually dentate. FLOWERS: solitary in the leafaxils, in axillary glomerules, or in dense or open terminal racemes or panicles; involucel absent; calyx 5-lobed, often basally 10-ribbed; corolla white, yellow, orange or purplish, sometimes with a dark red center. FRUITS: schizocarpic, glabrous or pubescent; mericarps 5-14, usually indurate, usually laterally reticulate, apically 2-spined or muticous. NOTES: Ca. 150 spp. from all the warmer parts of the world. (name taken from Theophrastos, who applied it to Nymphaea). Fryxell, P. A. 1985. Sida 11:62-91. SEEDS: solitary, glabrous. REFERENCES: Fryxell, Paul A. 1994. Malvaceae. J. Ariz. – Nev. Acad. Sci. Volume 27(2), 222-236.