Sphaeralcea coccinea(Nutt.) Rydb.

scarlet globemallow

WFO wfo-0000505401 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Sphaeralcea coccinea, photographed by Sam Wilber
fig. a Sam Wilber, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205565537

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 19 botanical countries

Regions where Sphaeralcea coccinea is native: Alberta, Arizona, British Columbia, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Manitoba, Mexico Northeast, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Saskatchewan, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Wyoming AlbertaArizonaBritish ColumbiaColoradoIdahoIowaKansasManitobaMexico NortheastMontanaNebraskaNew MexicoNorth DakotaOklahomaSaskatchewanSouth DakotaTexasUtahWyoming
Native distribution of Sphaeralcea coccinea, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Alberta ABT NORTHERN AMERICA
Arizona ARI
British Columbia BRC
Colorado COL
Idaho IDA
Iowa IOW
Kansas KAN
Manitoba MAN
Mexico Northeast MXE
Montana MNT
Nebraska NEB
New Mexico NWM
North Dakota NDA
Oklahoma OKL
Saskatchewan SAS
South Dakota SDA
Texas TEX
Utah UTA
Wyoming WYO

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 914 in flower of 1,022 examined

Proportion of examined Sphaeralcea coccinea in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 1 too few examined
Feb 0 1 too few examined
Mar 23 27 85% 68% to 94%
Apr 157 175 90% 84% to 93%
May 245 277 88% 84% to 92%
Jun 335 359 93% 90% to 95%
Jul 100 114 88% 80% to 93%
Aug 24 28 86% 69% to 94%
Sep 18 23 78% 58% to 90%
Oct 7 11 64% 35% to 85%
Nov 3 3 too few examined
Dec 2 3 too few examined

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Sphaeralcea coccinea 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. 914 of 1,022 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 4 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. 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 20 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.

  • Cristaria coccinea (Nutt.) Pursh
  • Malva coccinea Nutt.
  • Malva creeana Graham
  • Malvastrum coccineum (Nutt.) A.Gray
  • Malvastrum coccineum var. dissectum (Nutt. ex Torr. & A.Gray) A.Gray
  • Malvastrum coccineum var. elatum Baker f.
  • Malvastrum cockerellii A.Nelson
  • Malvastrum dissectum var. cockerellii (A.Nelson) A.Nelson
  • Malvastrum elatum (Baker f.) A.Nelson
  • Malvastrum micranthum Wooton & Standl.
  • Malveopsis coccinea (Nutt.) Kuntze
  • Nototriche coccinea (Nutt.) Nieuwl. & Lunell
  • Sida coccinea (Nutt.) DC.
  • Sida dissecta Nutt. ex Torr. & A.Gray
  • Sphaeralcea coccinea subsp. dissecta (Nutt. ex Torr. & A.Gray) Kearney
  • Sphaeralcea coccinea subsp. elata (Baker f.) Kearney
  • Sphaeralcea coccinea var. dissecta (Nutt. ex Torr. & A.Gray) Garrett
  • Sphaeralcea creeana (Graham) Sprague & Sandwith
  • Sphaeralcea dissecta (Nutt.) Rydb.
  • Sphaeralcea elata (Baker f.) Rydb.

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.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.