Common wireweed

Sida acuta is an erect, much-branched perennial subshrub of the Malvaceae family, typically 30 to 120 centimetres tall, with tough, fibrous, wiry stems that are nearly glabrous to sparsely stellate-pubescent and woody at the base. The alternate, lanceolate to narrowly elliptic leaves are 2 to 8 centimetres long and 0.5 to 2 centimetres wide, with finely serrate margins, an acute apex, an unequal base and short petioles subtended by paired slender stipules longer than the petiole. Small, pale yellow to cream solitary or paired axillary flowers, 8 to 15 millimetres across, open in the morning; each has five obovate petals, a fused staminal column and a five-lobed calyx. The schizocarpic fruit splits at maturity into five to eight wedge-shaped mericarps, each bearing two short awns. Native to the Americas but now a near-pantropical weed of pastures, roadsides, waste ground and cultivated land, it tolerates poor soils, drought and heavy grazing and produces tough bast fibres.