Plants annual or perennial herba or shrublets up to 75 cm tall; vegetative parts pubescnet with simple hairs and/or sellate hairs, often also with glandular hairs. Leaves petiolate; petioles 5-10 mm long; blades deeply usually 3-5-lobed to digitately divided, raely only shallowly lbed, obes oblanceolate to obovate, up to 25 mm long and 10 mm wide, dentate distally, tips subacute to rounded. Flowers axillary, solitary; pedicels 10-50 mm long articulated near the top. Epicalyx bracts 8-11, filiform to slightly spathulate, 4-10 mm long in flower, ciliate; calyces 2-4 mm long, puberulous to pubescent, most densely so over the veins or glabrous; petals 6-11 mm long, yellow or white, sometines tinged with pink. Mericarps 3-4 mm long with up to 0.5 mm wide wings, puberulous, with a central ridge, andsome transverse ridges on the back.
Pavonia zelanica grows in deciduous bushland and woodland on a variety of soil types, including gypsum and dunes, at 5-1200 m. It is known from regions N1, C1-2, and S1-3 in the Flora of Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea, westwards to West Africa and southwards to northeast Tanzania and to India and Sri Lanka.