Abutilon pictum Edible upright evergreen first described from

upright evergreen first described from Hong Kong Island and named for the collector Crapnell

and this hardy form brings that resilience to colder ground

and gardeners who know her keep reaching for the same comparison: the Juniper Level Botanic Garden likens the plant to a flowering cherry far more than a camellia

so a hard late-winter cut keeps the shrub compact and fruitful

with twenty to thirty narrow ray florets in a deep

Abutilon pictum Edible upright evergreen first described fromTwo things the common names get wrong: it is not Chinese, and it is not a maple. Abutilon pictum comes from the warm river country of southern Brazil and its neighbors, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay, and the maple lives only in the leaves, which are lobed and toothed enough to have fooled people into "flowering maple." It belongs instead to the mallow family, in good company with hibiscus, hollyhock, okra, and cotton, and it carries that