Lantern vine

Herissantia crispa, the lantern vine or bladder mallow, is a trailing or scrambling herb of the Malvaceae family, with stems up to about 1.5 metres long covered in soft whitish hairs. Leaves are alternate, ovate to heart-shaped, up to 7 cm long, with crinkled or rippled margins and a softly hairy surface that gives the plant a greyish-green appearance. Solitary flowers arise from the leaf axils on slender pedicels and have five pale yellow, broadly oval petals each up to a centimetre long. The most distinctive feature is the fruit: an inflated, lantern-like sphere about 2 cm across, ribbed into segments and coated in long spreading hairs, containing two or three small black kidney-shaped seeds per segment. The species is native to the tropical Americas and has spread as an introduced and sometimes weedy plant throughout the tropics and warm temperate regions of the world, occurring on roadsides, disturbed ground and open scrub.