Malvastrum americanum (Indian Valley false mallow)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Malvastrum americanum, photographed by johnyochum — fig. a johnyochum, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-29 / obs. 192195227

Malvastrum americanum, photographed by Greg Tasney — fig. b Greg Tasney, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 183876685

Malvastrum americanum, photographed by Kym Nicolson — fig. c Kym Nicolson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 182803228

Malvastrum americanum, photographed by Center for Urban Ecology — fig. e Center for Urban Ecology, CC0 1.0 / obs. 176393482

Malvastrum americanum, photographed by Jared Shorma — fig. g Jared Shorma, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 167884961

Malvastrum americanum, photographed by Melissa McMasters — fig. h Melissa McMasters, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 169741504

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 47 botanical countries

Native distribution of Malvastrum americanum, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Argentina Northeast	AGE	SOUTHERN AMERICA
Aruba	ARU
Bahamas	BAH
Belize	BLZ
Bolivia	BOL
Brazil North	BZN
Brazil Northeast	BZE
Brazil South	BZS
Brazil Southeast	BZL
Brazil West-Central	BZC
Cayman Is.	CAY
Colombia	CLM
Costa Rica	COS
Cuba	CUB
Dominican Republic	DOM
Ecuador	ECU
El Salvador	ELS
French Guiana	FRG
Guatemala	GUA
Guyana	GUY
Haiti	HAI
Honduras	HON
Jamaica	JAM
Leeward Is.	LEE
Netherlands Antilles	NLA
Nicaragua	NIC
Panamá	PAN
Paraguay	PAR
Peru	PER
Puerto Rico	PUE
Southwest Caribbean	SWC
Suriname	SUR
Trinidad-Tobago	TRT
Turks-Caicos Is.	TCI
Venezuela	VEN
Venezuelan Antilles	VNA
Windward Is.	WIN
Florida	FLA	NORTHERN AMERICA
Georgia	GEO
Louisiana	LOU
Mexico Central	MXC
Mexico Gulf	MXG
Mexico Northeast	MXE
Mexico Northwest	MXN
Mexico Southeast	MXT
Mexico Southwest	MXS
Texas	TEX

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 197 in flower of 251 examined

82%

85%

78%

67%

79%

45%

80%

90%

80%

89%

77%

89%

Proportion of examined Malvastrum americanum in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	18	22	82%	61% to 93%
Feb	17	20	85%	64% to 95%
Mar	18	23	78%	58% to 90%
Apr	33	49	67%	53% to 79%
May	11	14	79%	52% to 92%
Jun	5	11	45%	21% to 72%
Jul	4	5	80%	38% to 96%
Aug	9	10	90%	60% to 98%
Sep	4	5	80%	38% to 96%
Oct	16	18	89%	67% to 97%
Nov	23	30	77%	59% to 88%
Dec	39	44	89%	76% to 95%

Peak flowering in Aug. Each bar is the share of Malvastrum americanum observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 197 of 251 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 30 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

Malope lutea Raf.
Malva americana L.
Malva astrolasia Zipp. ex Span.
Malva blumeana Steud.
Malva brachystachya F.Muell.
Malva curassavica Desr.
Malva fluminensis Vell.
Malva gangetica L.
Malva macrostachya C.Presl
Malva ovata Cav.
Malva polystachya Cav.
Malva spicata L.
Malva spicata var. ovata (Cav.) Hemsl.
Malva sublobata Desr.
Malva timoriensis DC.
Malva trachelifolia Link
Malvastrum americanum var. americanum
Malvastrum americanum var. stellatum S.R.Hill
Malvastrum macrostachyum (C.Presl) Hemsl.
Malvastrum spicatum A.Gray
Malvastrum trachelifolium Ulbr.
Malveopsis americana (L.) Kuntze
Malveopsis macrostachya (C.Presl) Kuntze
Malveopsis spicata Kuntze

and 6 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.