PLANT: Robust perennial herbs to 2 m tall, densely stellate-pubescent to glabrate. LEAVES: aceriform, 4-15 cm long, with 5-7 triangular lobes. INFLORESCENCE: a spicate or corymbose raceme; involucel trimerous, the bracts linear to lanceolate; calyx 5-lobed; petals white, pink, or purplish; staminal column pubescent, shorter than petals; styles 8-12, usually with obliquely truncate stigmas. FRUITS: schizocarpic, subglobose, hirsute; mericarps 8-12, dehiscent, thin-walled. SEEDS: 2-4 per mericarp, pubescent or puberulent. NOTES: 6 or 7 spp. from temperate N. Amer., principally in the Rocky Mountains, but with outlying populations in IL, N, VA. (perhaps from the place-name -Iliamna- for a lake, a volcano, and a town in AK, but Greene did not say). Wiggins, I. L. 1936. Contr. Dudley Herb. 1:213-229. REFERENCES: Fryxell, Paul A. 1994. Malvaceae. J. Ariz. - Nev. Acad. Sci. Volume 27(2), 222-236.
Bractlets of the epicalyx 3, narrowly linear, persistent; pet large; stamen-column bearing anthers at the summit; carpels numerous, 2-4-seeded, at maturity rounded at the summit, dehiscent to the base, thin-walled and plane on the sides, densely hirsute on the back with long, erect, simple hairs; branching perennial herbs with large, thin, palmately lobed, maple-like lvs and handsome fls solitary or fascicled in the upper axils. 7, U.S.
Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.
