Teabush

Melochia tomentosa is a shrub in the mallow family (Malvaceae, formerly placed in Sterculiaceae), native to the Neotropics from Mexico and the Caribbean through Central America to northern South America. Plants typically reach 1-3 meters in height with slender, much-branched stems that are densely covered with soft, stellate, whitish-grey to tawny tomentum, giving the entire plant a velvety, ash-grey appearance. The leaves are alternate, simple, ovate to ovate-lanceolate, 2-7 cm long, with crenate to serrate margins, rounded to subcordate bases, and prominent palmate venation; both surfaces, especially the underside, are densely stellate-pubescent. Flowers are borne in small axillary or terminal cymes; each flower has five rose-pink to pale purple petals 8-15 mm long, a cup-shaped tomentose calyx, and a central column of fused stamens characteristic of the family. The fruit is a small five-lobed dehiscent capsule, woolly on the outside, containing small dark seeds. It is common in dry tropical scrub, coastal thickets, and disturbed open ground.