Stellenbosch University Botanical Garden, South Africa

Family: Malvaceae (Mallow)

Distribution: South Africa (KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga), Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique

Habitat: Savanna

National red list: Least Concern

Life form: Evergreen shrub / sub-shrub

Comments: This southern African cotton species also produces large seed pods with seeds bearing long fibrous cotton. This evolved as a seed dispersal mechanism in the genus but has been bred to produce cotton.
The greatest diversity of wild cotton species is in Mexico, followed by Australia and then Africa. Cotton was independently domesticated in the Old and New Worlds.This wild subspecies is the same species domesticated as Levant cotton, which produces a small proportion (~2%) of global cotton.