Sphaeralcea ambigua

Apricot mallow

Family: Malvaceae · Type: shrub · Native

Apricot mallow is a California native shrub found in desert and southwestern bioregions in dry, open habitats at elevations of 100 to 1,500 meters. Flowering from March to October, this plant produces salmon-orange to apricot-colored flowers in open panicles. Growing with erect, canescent stems 50 to 100 centimeters tall, it forms a distinctively soft, grayish subshrub. Its leaves are roughly triangular, 15 to 50 millimeters long, with three weak lobes and a wavy, crenate edge, colored green to yellow-green with a wedge-shaped or truncate base. The fruit develops into 9 to 13 small segments, each containing two brown seeds.

California counties: San Bernardino, Riverside, Kern, San Diego, Inyo, Butte, Imperial, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Mono, Ventura, Siskiyou, Napa, Tulare, Yolo

Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.