Leather-coat

Waltheria indica is a perennial herb or low subshrub of the Malvaceae family (formerly Sterculiaceae) growing 0.4-1.5 m tall from a slender woody taproot. Stems are erect to ascending, terete, branched, and densely covered with soft, spreading, stellate hairs that lend the whole plant a velvety greyish-green appearance. Leaves are alternate, simple, ovate to oblong-ovate, 2-7 cm long, with serrate-crenate margins, a rounded to subcordate base, palmate venation and a softly tomentose texture on both surfaces. Stipules are slender, lanceolate and persistent. The inflorescence is a compact, sessile to shortly pedunculate axillary glomerule of many small flowers subtended by leafy bracts. Individual flowers are 4-6 mm across with a five-lobed bell-shaped calyx, five obovate bright yellow petals, five stamens fused at the base into a short tube, and a one-celled ovary topped by a plumose stigma. The fruit is a small bivalved capsule enclosed by the persistent calyx and contains a single obovoid seed. Native to the warmer regions of the Americas and now pantropical, occupying disturbed sandy and rocky soils, roadsides, pastures and coastal dunes.