Lavatera trimestris L.
Annual up to 1.5 m high, branched or not from base. Stems moderately hairy in younger parts with simple or few-rayed deflexed hairs, becoming ± glabrous and slightly woody toward base when older. Lvs sparsely hairy with mostly simple hairs above and mostly stellate hairs below; lower lvs ovate-triangular to suborbicular, cordate at base, not lobed, crenate, 2-7 cm long; upper lvs shallowly 3-5-palmately lobed or ± entire, crenate; petioles 2-7 cm long; stipules triangular, 3-6 mm long. Fls axillary, solitary; fruiting pedicels 2-10 cm long; epicalyx segments broadly triangular, united for almost entire length, 1/2-3/4 length of calyx, distinctly enlarged and spreading at fruiting; calyx campanulate; calyx teeth ± = tube, triangular to ovate-triangular, acute to acuminate, finely clothed in stellate hairs, ± connivent at fruiting; petals pink or mauve, 20-35 mm long. Mericarps c. 12 per fr., obscured by axis, glabrous, transverse-reticulately veined on back; edges rounded.
N.: Auckland City, Palmerston North; S.: Nelson City.
Mediterranean 1978
Waste places, pasture.
FL Nov-May.
L. trimestris is a cultivated sp. collected only as a local garden escape. The mericarps are covered by a disc-like expansion of the central axis which readily distinguishes this sp. from other N.Z. Lavatera (Fig. 82). The sp. has been recorded in N.Z. as Althea officinalis.
