Sphaeralcea digitata

Heil et al. 2013, Allred and Ivey 2012, McDougall 1973

Duration: Perennial Nativity: Native Lifeform: Forb/Herb General: Perennial herb, 20-55 cm tall, from a woody caudex; stems few to many per plant; herbage thinly canescent to sparsely stellate-hairy. Leaves: Alternate and petiolate; blades 1.5 to 4 cm long and about as wide, palmately divided to the base into 5 leaflets, each leaflet lanceolate with a tapering base, and some of the leaflets with 1 or 2 shallow lobes. Flowers: Orange-red, in 10-20 flowered racemes, the lowest nodes on the raceme sometimes with more than one flower; sepals 5, ovate, 3-7 mm long, fused at the base, uniformly covered in stellate hairs; petals 5, orange-red, 8-14 mm long. Fruits: Schizocarps hemispheric, splitting into 9-13 single seeded carpels, these 3-4 mm high, not reticulate. Ecology: Found on well-drained slopes, usually with junipers or pines, from 4,000-7,000 ft (1219-2134 m); flowers May-June. Notes: This Sphaeralcea is easily distinguished by its leaves which are palmately divided to the base into 5 lanaceolate segments, with a few of the segments also with a couple of small lobes; like most mallows, the plant is covered with stellate hairs, but this plant is somewhat sparsely hairy, so that the herbage is mostly green and not tinted yellow or white from the hairs. The raceme usually does not have many flowers. Sphaeralcea spp. can be tricky to tell apart, and the key characteristics are often the mature fruits, which are small and cheese-wheel shaped, and split apart like the segments of an orange. It is best to make a quality collection with mature fruits for identification.  Ethnobotany: Ramah Navajo used an infusion of the whole plant for stomachaches. Root used ceremonially as a life medicine. Etymology: Sphaeralcea is from the Greek sphaira, a globe, and alcea, the hollyhock genus (a type of mallow); digitata refers to the digitate ("finger-like,") or palmate pattern of the leaf segments. Editor: AHazelton 2017