Garden escape

Semi-deciduous shrub or small tree with downy, palmately lobed leaves. A native of China, widely cultivated and occasionally becoming naturalised. Mutabilis from the Latin mutare meaning to change. The flowers are white when they first open, gradually turn light pink, then dark pink in the evening. Stems and petioles with dense stellate and glandular hairs. Flowers solitary or usually in apparently terminal, few-flowered corymbs. Considered an environmental weed in parts of South-East Queensland.

Photo: Robert Whyte