The flowers are structured like most Hibiscus flowers, five petals and a long style that separates into five stigmas. The style is surrounded by a tube formed by the fused filaments of the stamens. The anthers of the stamens encircle the tube (and style) like a bottlebrush.

The flowers differ in that they hang from the branches like lanterns. The petals are recurved and finely divided—schizo, split, and petalus, petals. The flowers are pollinated by hummingbirds.

The fringed rosemallow is one of those 'uncertain plants'. Some botanical authorities consider it a species; others feel it is a variety, Hibiscus rosa-sinensis var. schizopetalus Dyer. This shrub was long believed native to tropical east Africa—Kenya, Mozambique, and Tanzania. Now botanists are not so sure.

It is thought that sometime in the early travels of the Europeans or perhaps even earlier, the shrub was introduced and spread in east Africa on its own. Fringed rosemallow is cultivated in so many places around the subtropics that no one knows where the plant originated.

(Compiled from: "Hibiscus", Hortus Third, Staff L.H. Bailey Hortorium, NY State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University, Macmillan, NY, 1976; "Hibiscus", A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants, C. Brickell and J.D. Zuk, eds., American Horticultural Society, DK Publishing, NY, 1996; and "3: Invasive Woody Plants in the Tropics", Pierre Binggeli, Woody Plant Ecology, 1999. )