Malva maritima

Malva maritima, the sea mallow (long known as Lavatera maritima), is a softly woody perennial subshrub of the family Malvaceae growing 0.5-2 m tall and native to coastal areas of the western and central Mediterranean from Spain and the Balearic Islands through southern France to Italy and North Africa. The plant forms a loose rounded bush with grey-green densely stellate-tomentose stems and foliage that give it a velvety silvery appearance. The alternate leaves are long-petioled, ovate to suborbicular in outline, 3-7 cm across, shallowly 3-5 lobed with rounded crenate-toothed margins, a cordate or truncate base and felted on both surfaces with star-shaped hairs. From spring through summer and often into autumn the shrub bears a long succession of solitary or paired flowers in the upper leaf axils. Each flower is showy, 3-6 cm across, with five broad obovate notched petals that are pale pink to lilac-pink with a darker reddish-purple base and venation, surrounding a typical malvaceous column of stamens. The fruit is a flattened ring of 6-9 wedge-shaped one-seeded mericarps surrounded by the persistent calyx and epicalyx. It inhabits coastal cliffs, dry rocky slopes and disturbed maritime ground.