Sphaeralcea obtusiloba(Hook.) G.Don

WFO wfo-0001077048 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 5 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 5 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Sphaeralcea obtusiloba, photographed by Cesar Ormazabal
fig. a Cesar Ormazabal, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-10-10 / obs. 165861444
Sphaeralcea obtusiloba, photographed by Cesar Ormazabal
fig. b Cesar Ormazabal, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 165861419
Sphaeralcea obtusiloba, photographed by Javier Conejeros Gastó
fig. c Javier Conejeros Gastó, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 171224668
Sphaeralcea obtusiloba, photographed by Aira Francisca Faúndez Fallau
fig. d Aira Francisca Faúndez Fallau, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 93020815
Sphaeralcea obtusiloba, photographed by Aira Francisca Faúndez Fallau
fig. e Aira Francisca Faúndez Fallau, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 79516351
Sphaeralcea obtusiloba, photographed by Javier Conejeros Gastó
fig. f Javier Conejeros Gastó, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 171224684
Sphaeralcea obtusiloba, photographed by Aira Francisca Faúndez Fallau
fig. g Aira Francisca Faúndez Fallau, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 93020835
Sphaeralcea obtusiloba, photographed by Aira Francisca Faúndez Fallau
fig. h Aira Francisca Faúndez Fallau, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 79516381

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
Smithsonian, US National Herbarium
Accession
US 1057839
Filed as
Sphaeralcea obtusiloba (Hook.) G.Don
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
E. W. D. Holway & M. M. Holway 1919-09-10
Origin
CL
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC0 1.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 1 botanical country

Regions where Sphaeralcea obtusiloba is native: Chile Central Chile Central
Native distribution of Sphaeralcea obtusiloba, 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
Chile Central CLC SOUTHERN AMERICA

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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 150 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -0.2 °C 8.2 °C 10.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 17.0 °C 23.3 °C 29.8 °C
Annual rainfall 110 mm 520 mm 740 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 2 mm 5 mm 19 mm

It is found where winters bring light frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 150 research-grade observations of Sphaeralcea obtusiloba that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 21 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.

  • Malva asterocarpa Steud.
  • Malva berteroniana Steud.
  • Malva flexuosa Gillies ex Hook.
  • Malva obtusiloba Hook.
  • Sphaeralcea arenaria Phil.
  • Sphaeralcea berteroana Phil.
  • Sphaeralcea circinata Phil.
  • Sphaeralcea collina Phil.
  • Sphaeralcea coquimbana Phil.
  • Sphaeralcea gayana Phil.
  • Sphaeralcea rupestris Phil.
  • Sphaeralcea valparadisea Phil.
  • Sphaeralcea valparidisea Phil.
  • Sphaeralcea vidali Phil.
  • Sphaeroma berteroana (Phil.) Kuntze
  • Sphaeroma collinum (Phil.) Kuntze
  • Sphaeroma coquimbarum Kuntze
  • Sphaeroma gayanum (Phil.) Kuntze
  • Sphaeroma obtusilobum (Hook.) Kuntze
  • Sphaeroma rupestre (Phil.) Kuntze
  • Sphaeroma valparadiseum (Phil.) 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.
  3. 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.