Kansas Wildflowers and Grasses

ROSE-OF-SHARON

File Size: 62 KB

Hibiscus syriacus L.

Riley County, Kansas

Height: Perennial shrub to 13 feet tall

Family: Malvaceae – Mallow Family

Flowering Period: June, July, August

Trunks:

Erect

Twigs:

Twigs glabrous, line of minute hairs running length of internode.

Leaves:

Stipules linear to filiform, .1 to .5 inch; petiole ?1/4 to /12 blade; blade rhombic-ovate, 1.4 to 3.8 inches long, 1 to 3.4 inches wide, usually 3-lobed, base wedge-shaped or rounded, margins coarsely crenate-serrate, apex acute to short-acuminate, surfaces nearly glabrous.

Flowers:

Solitary flowers or few-flowered clusters in axils of upper leaves. Pedicels to .6 inch densely and minutely stellate-hairy, involucral bracts 7 or 8, linear or narrowly oblanceolate, .3 to .9 inch, unequal in length, stellate-hairy.Horizontal or ascending, sometimes double-flowered; calyx broadly bell-shaped, .6 to .8 inch, lobed for half length, lobes triangular, tips acute or short-acuminate, densely and minutely stellate-hairy; corolla broadly funnel-shaped,; petals 5 pink, lavender, blue, or white, base usually dark red, obovate, 1.4 to 3 inches long, 1 to 2.2 inches wide, margins entire or wavy, occasionally undulate; staminal column white, 1 to 1.4 inch long, bearing many anthers along sides, forming tube around pistil; style white, .12 to .3 inch long, 5-branched from or beyond orifice of staminal column.

Fruit:

Capsule, greenish tan, ovoid, .6 to 1 inch, apex apiculate, densely, and minutely stellate-hairy. Seeds reddish brown, reniform-ovoid, .16 to .2 inch, flattened laterally, glabrous laterally, long-hairy dorsally, hairs straight, reddish orange.

Habitat:

Old homesteads, streambanks, disturbed sites.

Distribution:

Documented spreading from cultivation in Douglas and Neosho Counties.

Origin:

Introduced

Comments:

Widely planted as an ornamental. It sometimes persists or escapes.

Rose-of-Sharon flower