PlantKey Open ecological atlas
Planner
Home / Browse / Abutilon / Monkeybush
iNaturalist — CC, credited & licensed per image
Malvaceae family

Monkeybush Abutilon indicum

Native

Monkeybush is a perennial shrub native to the Pacific Basin, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. It grows to 3 ft.

More about this plant

Abutilon indicum is a small shrub in the family Malvaceae, native to tropical and subtropical regions. This plant is a valuable medicinal and ornamental plant, its roots and leaves being used for curing fevers. It has been widely introduced outside of its native range, and is considered invasive on certain tropical islands. Wikipedia →

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Height · Foliage
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
Height
3 ft
Lifespan
Perennial
Foliage
Broadleaf
In the garden
Herb layer — Sits in the herb of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
derived roles
Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
❧ Caterpillar hosts ~5 caterpillar species

Abutilon supports ~5 caterpillar species.

Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is a modest genus for introduced plants — native genera typically support far more.

Recorded feeding on Abutilon in North America, including:

Anomis erosa · Yellow Scallop Moth Celotes limpia · Scarce Streaky-Skipper Celotes nessus · Common Streaky-Skipper Chionodes mariona · twirler moth Crocidosema plebejana · leafroller moth Helicoverpa zea · Corn Earworm
+ 6 more species →
Heliopetes lavianus · skipper butterfly Mimoschinia rufofascialis · Rufous-Banded Crambid Papaipema nebris · Stalk Borer Pectinophora gossypiella · twirler moth Pyrgus oileus · Tropical Checkered Skipper Systasea pulverulenta · Texas Powdered-Skipper
Keystone count (genus-level) from Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use records. Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).
✦ Bees 5 bee visitors
Visitor records (observations, not exhaustive) from Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI →
Wildlife & visitors 2 nectaring

Open records of who else uses Monkeybush — a generalist food-web signal, kept separate from the keystone Ecological Value.

2 adult butterfly & moth species are recorded nectaring at its flowers:

Acraea terpsicore · Tawny Coster Jamides celeno
Interaction records (observations, not exhaustive) from GloBI → (CC0). Counts are distinct species; names are the most-recorded. Common names from Wikidata (CC0).
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
How we know this (1) Methods & honest limits
Photosynthesis Direct fact

A recorded categorical fact: each species is tagged C3 (standard), C4 (heat/water-efficient) or CAM (succulent, night-time CO₂ uptake) — or a facultative combination. We only show a trait card for the noteworthy C4/CAM cases; C3 is the unremarkable majority, kept in the data but not surfaced as a card.

Kattge, J. et al. TRY plant trait database — Categorical Traits Dataset (2012).
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →
Sources for this entry (21) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[05] Invasive / introduced status — US-RIIS v2.0 (USGS)
[06] Wetland indicator — USACE National Wetland Plant List (2022)
[08] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
[09] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[12] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[13] Photosynthetic pathway — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[14] Wildlife & visitors — GloBI — Global Biotic Interactions (CC0)
[19] Flower-visitor value (derived) — Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI
[20] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[21] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

Citation

Loading…

BibTeX 
Loading…