PlantKey Open ecological atlas
Planner
Home / Browse / Abutilon / Thurber's Indian Mallow
iNaturalist — CC, credited & licensed per image
Malvaceae family

Thurber's Indian Mallow Abutilon thurberi

Native

Thurber's Indian Mallow is a perennial shrub native to the lower 48 states.

More about this plant

Pseudabutilon thurberi, common name Thurber's Indian mallow, is a plant native to southern Arizona, Sonora, and Chihuahua. It is an erect or decumbent subshrub less than one meter tall, with yellow flowers up to six millimeters in diameter. It occurs in shaded locations in the mountains. Wikipedia →

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
Cold hardiness (derived) — Hardiness
Hardiness
≥ zone 10 derived from its U.S. range
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
Lifespan
Perennial
In the garden
Shrub layer — Sits in the shrub 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).
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.
Sources for this entry (12) 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 — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status
[07] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
[08] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[09] Conservation rank — NatureServe Explorer (CC BY)
[10] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[11] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[12] 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…