Sphaeralcea ambiguaA.Gray

apricot globemallow

WFO wfo-0001077145 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Sphaeralcea ambigua, photographed by velodrome
fig. a velodrome, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-14 / obs. 202493264
Sphaeralcea ambigua, photographed by T. J. Samojedny
fig. b T. J. Samojedny, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202281370
Sphaeralcea ambigua, photographed by Robert Webster
fig. c Robert Webster, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 198543592
Sphaeralcea ambigua, photographed by Wendy St. John
fig. d Wendy St. John, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 198968156
Sphaeralcea ambigua, photographed by Robert Webster
fig. e Robert Webster, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 198040662
Sphaeralcea ambigua, photographed by Bobby McCabe
fig. f Bobby McCabe, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 189124728
Sphaeralcea ambigua, photographed by Kyle Nessen
fig. g Kyle Nessen, CC0 1.0 / obs. 190784134
Sphaeralcea ambigua, photographed by velodrome
fig. h velodrome, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202593568

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.

Flowering n = 4,803 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 4,803 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 12 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.

  • Sphaeralcea ambigua subsp. ambigua
  • Sphaeralcea ambigua subsp. rosacea (Munz & I.M.Johnst.) Kearney
  • Sphaeralcea ambigua subsp. rugosa Kearney
  • Sphaeralcea ambigua subsp. versicolor Kearney
  • Sphaeralcea ambigua var. aculeata Jeps.
  • Sphaeralcea ambigua var. keckii Munz
  • Sphaeralcea ambigua var. monticola (Kearney) Kearney
  • Sphaeralcea ambigua var. pulchella Jeps.
  • Sphaeralcea macdougalii Rose & Standl.
  • Sphaeralcea purpurea Parish ex Jeps.
  • Sphaeralcea rosacea Munz & I.M.Johnst.
  • Sphaeroma ambiguum (Ten.) Kuntze

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

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