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Usually erect herbs, with often lobed leaves and handsome hermaphrodite flowers. Bracts numerous (or few) below the calyx, free or connate. — Calyx 5-fid or 5-toothed. Petals usually cuneate, oblique, soon withering. Staminal tube long, 5-toothed at the mouth, below which the filaments are inserted. Ovary 5-celled, with 5 spreading styles and terminal stigmas; cells 3- or many-ovuled [2]. Capsule 5-valved, loculicidal. Seeds glabrous or woolly.
A very large tropical genus, containing may very handsome plants, some, such as Ochra (H. esculentus), yielding an esculent fruit, others (H. cannabinus), cordage; a few are trees, some climb.
1. H. trionum, Linn.; — Fl. N. Z. i. 28. A hispid annual, often branched; stem almost woody below, erect or with spreading branches, 1-2 ft. high. Leaves petioled, cordata, palmately 3-5-lobed, lobes linear, often serrate or sinuate, the middle one longest. Bracts numerous, setaceous. Flowers ½-1 in. diam., yellow with a purple eye. Calyx membranous, hispid, veined. Stamens few or many. Seeds dark-brown, wrinkled, glabrous. Capsule hispid. — Bot. Mag. t. 209; H. vesicarius, Cav.; A. Cunn. Prodr.
Scattered over the islands, and possibly introduced (A. Cunningham). Most common in the northern parts of the Northern Island, and certainly indigenous (Colenso). Middle Island [1]: South Wanganui, Lyall. A very common Australian, Asiatic, and S. African plant, also found in S. Europe and elsewhere in the Old World.
Corrigenda: in the last line of generic character, for cells 3- or many-ovuled, read cells 2-ovuled.
[1] Now universally known as South Island.
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