Plants perennial herbs or shrubs, up to at leat 1 m tall, all parts greyish tomentose with very short stellate hairs, rarely also with long simple hairs. Leaves petiolate; petioles 0.5-8.5 cm long; blades broadly ovate, 2-11 cm long, 1.5-8 cm wide, bases cordate, margins subentire, shallowly crenate or serrate, tips acute to rounded. Flowers solitary, axillary or on short axiallary branches; pedicels 1-4(-8( cm long, slender.; calyces 4-10 mm long, divided to about the middle, usually shorter than the fruits; petals 7-17 mm long, yellow to orange. Mericarps about 10, 5-9 mm long, 3-4 mm wide, with 2-3 seeds, dirsal angles subacute to mucronate but not awned, tomentose; seeds about 2 mm long, papillose.
Abutilon fruticosumgrows in deciduous bushland or woodland, usually on sandy or rocky ground but also on alluvial soils at 20-1650 m. Itis know from all 8 regions of the Flora of Somalia as well as Djibouti, Socotra, Eritrea, Ehtiopia, in drier partts of tropical Africa and across Asia from Arabia t India.