Wild Cotton

Photo by Ned Harris 5/23/2014

Photo by Ned Harris 6/2/2012

Fruit of Wild Cotton
Photo by Ned Harris 10/17/2010

Wild Cotton (Gossypium thurberi) is in the Mallow family. Plants in this family have flowers with five separate (as opposed to fused) petals. Their fruits (fruits are those things that have the seeds) are capsules. If you broke open the dried fruit above, you'd see dark seeds in each chamber of the capsule. You'd also see very sparse cotton fibers. (Click on the link above for a close up of the fruit.) These aren't the plants whose fibers are used for cloth, although they are related.