Bastard sida-retusa

Malvastrum americanum, the Indian valley false mallow or pelotazo, is an erect annual or short-lived perennial herb to subshrub in the Malvaceae, widespread across warm regions of the Americas from the southern United States and the Caribbean to northern South America and naturalised in parts of the Old World tropics. Plants grow 30 to 150 centimetres tall with slender, rather woody stems clothed in stellate, somewhat appressed pubescence. The alternate, petiolate leaves are ovate to oblong-lanceolate, 2 to 7 centimetres long, with crenate-serrate margins and roughly stellate-hairy surfaces. Yellow to pale orange-yellow flowers about 1 centimetre across are crowded into dense terminal and axillary spike-like clusters; each flower has five obovate petals and a column of fused stamens characteristic of the family, subtended by three linear bracteoles below the calyx. The fruit is a flattened schizocarp that splits at maturity into 8 to 14 hairy, beaked indehiscent mericarps, each containing a single seed.