Mu Fu Rong Ye

Hibiscus mutabilis, the cotton rose or Confederate rose, is a large deciduous shrub or small tree of the Malvaceae family native to southern China and now widely cultivated across warm-temperate and subtropical regions. The plant grows two to five meters tall with a rounded, freely branching habit, the young branches and undersides of leaves covered in stellate tomentum. Leaves are large, broadly ovate to nearly rounded, palmately five- to seven-lobed with shallow rounded teeth, and prominently palmately veined; they reach fifteen to twenty centimeters across and are softly downy on both surfaces. The plant is famed for its large showy flowers borne singly in upper leaf axils in late summer and autumn; the petals are remarkable in that they open white or pale pink in the morning and gradually deepen through pink to deep rose-red by evening.