About Cochlospermum vitifolium (Willd.) Spreng.
Cochlospermum vitifolium (Willd.) Spreng. grows as trees or shrubs, reaching heights of 3 to 15 metres (10 to 50 ft). Its leaves have 5 to 7 elliptic to oblong lobes with acuminate tips; leaf margins range from nearly entire to serrate, and leaf undersides may be glabrous or pubescent. It produces broad terminal panicles of flowers. The flowers are actinomorphic, 8 to 12 centimetres (3 to 5 in) wide, with broadly obovate, emarginate yellow petals. The ovary is 1-locular, with 5 parietal placentas. Mature capsules range from suberect to hanging, shaped broadly ovate to obovate and umbilicate. Outer capsule valves are dark brown, gray, or greenish, and can be velvety or glabrous; inner capsule valves are ochre to cream and glabrous. Seeds are kidney-shaped, covered with white gossypinous trichomes. This species is native to tropical America, where it has a continuous distribution across the tropics, extending from western Mexico through Central America and northern South America to Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, the Guyanas, and Trinidad. In Mexico, it occurs in warm, semi-warm, and temperate climates from sea level up to 1,000 metres (3,300 ft). It grows in disturbed vegetation, and can be found associated with dunes, mangrove edges, savannah, deciduous, subdeciduous, subperennial, and perennial tropical forests, xerophytic shrubland on plains or hills, spiny forest, and the edges of cloud forest, oak forest, and pine forest.
