American cotton

Gossypium hirsutum is an erect annual or short-lived perennial shrub of the Malvaceae family growing 1-2 m tall in cultivation, with a stout woody taproot and a sympodial branched habit producing both vegetative and fruiting branches. Stems are densely clothed with stellate hairs, often with a reddish tinge, becoming somewhat woody below. Leaves are alternate, long-petiolate, palmately three- to five-lobed with broad triangular acuminate lobes, 8-20 cm across, palmate-veined and sparsely to densely stellate-pubescent on both surfaces; conspicuous foliar nectaries occur on the underside of the main veins. Flowers are solitary in the leaf axils, subtended by three large persistent foliaceous bracts with deeply incised margins; the calyx is cup-shaped, five-lobed and the corolla is broadly bell-shaped, 4-6 cm across, with five obovate creamy white to pale yellow petals often blushed pink or purple at the base, turning pink to red as they age. The fruit (boll) is a leathery ovoid capsule 3-5 cm long that splits into three to five valves at maturity to expose 20-40 black or brown ovoid seeds densely clothed in long white to creamy cotton fibres. Native to tropical and subtropical Americas and now the principal source of commercial cotton.