Sherard's Malvella

The plant is a perennial found in fields and waste places (0–1000 m) consisting of many ground-spreading stems, with many round long-stalked leaves (to 50 mm wide) with crinkly edges and sizeable gap at base, and small long-stalked mallow-like solitary pink flowers (10 mm diam), each with five unnotched petals and many anthers. The fruit is a ring of many inflated segments. All parts are densely short-hairy with star-like (stellate) hairs. The main veins of the leaves radiate from the leaf base to the edge, with secondary veins. The epicalyx at the base of the calyx is inconspicuous, composed of three small (1–2 mm) filamentous parts.

Malvella sherardiana occurs in Bulgaria, Cyprus, East Aegean Islands, Greece, Iran, Iraq, Crimea, Lebanon-Syria, North Caucasus, Palestine, Spain, Transcaucasus, and Turkey. In Spain, all known wild populations of M. sherardiana occupy heavy, expansive clay soils (vertisols), typically in ruderal‑arvense or pastizal‑cardal communities subject to grazing and trampling. In the newly reported Toledo locality (Numancia de la Sagra, 560 m) plants grow on brown clays with a sparse herbaceous cover. Similar substrates and vegetation occur at all confirmed sites in Ávila, Madrid and Toledo.