See references

Plants herbs, shrubs or small trees, often with stellate or scale-like hairs, less frequently with simple hairs. Leaves alternate, stipulate; stipules usually persistent, sometimes deciduous; blades usually simple and often palmately lobed, sometimes palmately compound. Inflorescences of solitary, axillary flowers or of terminal or axillary clusters of flowers. Flowers bisexual, radially symmetric, often with an epicalyx; sepals (2-) 5 (-7), valvate, usually at least partially united at least at the base, sometimes for most of their length, occasionally free; nectary glands consisting of dense cushions of multicellular but uniseriate glandular hairs usually present, often on the inner surface of the sepals, sometimes on the petals or androgynophores; petals (4-) 5(-7) or absent, free, sometimes adnate to a filament tube; stamens usually 4-many, when many their filaments oten fused into a staminal tube the stamend in 5 bundles or 2 whorls of 5 bundles, anthers with 1 or 2 thecae; ovaries superior (1-)-2-many-celled, usually syncarpous, occasionally apocarpous, with 1-many ovules per cell; styles simple, often branched distally, the branches as many or twice as many as the locules, stigmas oten capitate or lobed. Fruits usually capsules or schizocarps, sometimes woody follicles, berries, or nuts.

The family Malvaceae, as described here, includes some groups that are often treated as distinct but closely related families, such as the Bombacaceae, Sterculiaceae, and Tiliaceae. The expanded Malvaceae, which includes about 245 genera and over 4200 species, is monophyletic but, as might be expected, it encompasses considerable variability. Features often found in the family are stellate and/or lepidote hairs and many stamens that are in bundles of 5 or fused by their filaments to form a staminal tube. These features are also found in other families but, when combined with other features that are common in the Malvaceae, will enable recognition of the family. 

References

Cronquist, A. 1981. Malvales, pp. 341-361 in Cronquist, A. An integrated system of classification of flowering plants. Columbia University Press, New York, New York, U.S.A.

Demissew, S. 1999. Tiliaceae. Pp. 5-21 in M. Thulin (Ed.) Flora of Somalia 2: 21-82. Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Richmond, U.K. 

Thulin, M. 1999. Sterculiaceae, Bombacaceae, and Malvaceae in M. Thulin (Ed.) Flora of Somalia 2: 21-82. Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Richmond, U.K.