Plants annual herbs, pubescent to glabrous, wit decumbent or ascending stems up to 50 cm long. Leaves petiolate; petioles 2-10 cm long; blades reniform to suborbicular. shallowly 5-7-lobed, up to about 7 cm long and 7 cm wide, margins crenate. Inflorescences axillary clusters with few flowers. Flowers pedicellate; pedicels 2-12 mm long. epicalyces with linear bracts up to 4 mm long; calyces about 4 mm long, accrescent in fruit, lobes ovate, acute; petals about 4 mm long, scarcely longer than the calyces, pink or white. Mericarps about 10, 2-2.5 mm long, glabrous, with sharp transverse ridges on the back and strongly ribbed sides, edges sharp.
Malva micrantha grows in open grassy areas in evergreen bushland, limestone gravel, or as a weed at 1150-1450 m. It is an almost cosmopolitan weed that it native to Europe and Asia. It is known from only from regions N1-3 of the Flora of Somalia and from Eritrea, Djibouti, and Ethiopia. It is the only species of Malva reported from Somaliland and Somalia in the Flora of Somalia.
