Talk:Sphaeralcea

Sphaeralcea

There are no known species of Sphaeralcea from Southern Africa; the Southern African plants formerly placed in Sphaeralcea are now placed in Anisodontea. Kubitzki & Bayer, Malvaceae, in Kubitzki & Bayer, eds., The Families and Genera of Vascular Plants V gives the number of species as 40. (My notes have 37 species, but they may not be complete.)

I have my doubts as to the accuracy of false mallow as a vernacular name for Sphaeralcea - this is more normally used for Malvastrum, but there were doubts as to where to draw the lines between these genera in the passed.

Iliamna (and Phymosia) are segregates from Sphaeralcea, but appear to be more closely related to the Californian bush-mallows.

Stewart R. Hinsley, www.malvaceae.info

When taxonomy changes, it's useful to comment on that in the article. On "false mallow", at least one person at the USGS uses it - see [1]. Common names are so variable in their application it's very hard to say "not valid" - for an example of how fish people dealt with common names, check out FishBase, part of their giant database is tables of which names have been used in which countries for which species. Stan 01:35, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)