Abutilon hirtum
Flowering maple
Large erect herb to soft-stemmed shrub up to about 1·5 m tall, covered on young parts, stems, petioles, pedicels and calyx with a dense usually somewhat yellowish or brownish usually velutinous occasionally somewhat harsh stellate-tomentose indumentum intermingled on young parts, especially the tips of the branches, with short glandular hairs, and usually on younger parts of stems, petioles and pedicels also with long patent white or yellow hairs, the latter more rarely very scanty stems terete, the older portions usually stout, at length glabrescent, slightly lignified with a large pith, covered with a thin greyish-brown cortex with close lanceolate-rhomboid to linear markings (shallow fissures or lenticels) often forming an almost continuous pattern
Leaf-lamina 4–20 cm long and up to 18 cm broad, suborbicular-cordate or broadly ovate-cordate, generally drying a yellowish or brownish-green colour, usually markedly acuminate with a narrow mucronate acumen, irregularly and distinctly to coarsely serrate or serrate-crenate to biserrate, occasionally very slightly 3-lobed finely and harshly stellate-pubescent, glabrescent, somewhat rough to the touch, often also with sessile glands (hence viscid) on the upper surface, more densely and more softly stellate-pubescent and with prominent veins on the slightly paler lower surface petiole generally as long as or longer than the corresponding lamina, terete
Flowers yellow, often with a reddish centre, and/or the venation reddish towards the centre, axillary, on main branches and sometimes also on short lateral shoots and often forming a terminal leafy panicle pedicels up to about 5 cm long, articulated in upper 11 mm
Fruit 12–15 × c 20 mm, depressed-globose, broadly and shallowly umbilicate, densely and shortly stellate-pubescent, nearly enclosed by the accrescent up to 14 mm long appressed fruiting calyx Mericarps 20–30, dorsally rounded, usually bluntly angled and muticous to shortly pointed near the dorsal (outer) upper side
Shrubs or under shrub, 05- 2 m tall leaves 4-18 cm long and broadly ovate or ovate, heart-shaped at base, coarsely toothed flowers yellow
•The plant is harvested from the wild for local use as a source of fibre, medicines and food. It is sometimes grown for its ornamental value. A fibre is obtained from the stem bark. It is used for making string, cordage and cloth. The fibre is long, fine, soft and strong
It is has environmental uses, as a medicine and for food.
The information in this website has been compiled from reliable sources, such as reference works on medicinal plants. It is not a substitute for medical advice or treatment and Mazhar Botanic Garden does not purport to provide any medical advice. Readers should always consult his/her physician before using or consuming a plant for medicinal purposes.
