If I were paranoid, I would say that I am being stalked by the mallow family. Regular people cannot imagine such a thing, but we plant lovers sometimes can. Consider the following….While walking on a country road in central New York State, I saw a stand of tall, single-flowered hollyhocks blooming by the side of a weathered wooden building. Farther up the same road, a rose of Sharon stood tall, decked out in hundreds of blue-purple blooms. At another house, a three-foot tall ‘Disco Belle Pink” hardy hibiscus held court in the front yard, with blooms almost as big as dinner plates. When I got back to our summer cottage, I noticed that our newly purchased tropical hibiscus had unfurled its petals, waiting, no doubt, for a hummingbird to come and pollinate the flowers. When that hibiscus arrives back in New Jersey, it will join the many other mallows-in-residence, including about eight roses of Sharon and an unnamed red-flowered relative of ‘Disco Belle Pink’ that has just finished its long summer flower show. If the mallows in my life had voices, there would be enough of them to sing the Hallelujah Chorus.
The mallow or Malvaceae family is large, containing about 95 genera, hundreds of individual species and even more cultivated varieties. The hollyhocks I saw, for example, most likely belong to Alcea rosea, one of about 50 Alcea species. Shrubby rose of Sharon, known to its botanist friends as Hibiscus syriacus, is one of about 300 hibiscus species. Another of them is Hibiscus rosa-sinensis, which includes our newly-acquired tropical hibiscus. “Disco Belle Pink” belongs to yet another hardy hibiscus species, Hibiscus moscheutos.
Mallows have many common traits, but the most obvious is the hollyhock-like flowers, which tend to have five colorful petals arranged around a prominent central column of fused stamens. If you spot a flower that looks like a hollyhock, it is almost certainly adorning a member of the mallow family.
Mallow flowers remind me a little of poppies—colorful and ephemeral. Each rose of Sharon bloom lasts only a single day, with hollyhocks and tropical hibiscus flowers staying on the stalk a bit longer. The beautiful, short-lived flower petals are not terribly substantial. Despite that, the plants themselves have staying power. Roses of Sharon may have a defined lifespan, but they self-seed so readily that they might as well be immortal. A mature rose of Sharon also produces hundreds of blooms in a flowering season that lasts up to a month or more. Tall hollyhocks, opening from the bottom up, crank out flowers for two weeks. The hardy hibiscus sprout flowers of eye-popping size for at least 10 days or more. Swamp and bog areas, like the New Jersey Meadowlands, are home to the prolific seashore mallow, which goes by the tongue-mangling Latin name of Kosteletzkya virginica. The pink-flowered mallows bloom from June through September, beautifying places that are often considered waste spaces.
Even vegetable gardeners can get in on the mallow act, by growing okra, also known as Abelmoschus esculentus, which, prior to producing its fruits, dazzles beholders with white or yellow hollyhock-like flowers with dramatic dark eye zones. The same kinds of flowers are also characteristic of Gossypium species, otherwise known as cotton.
You may not want to grow okra or cotton, but if you need more mallow in your life, there are many highly desirable choices, all of which are readily available from nurseries and garden centers. The high mallows or Malva sylvestris have been popular over the last decade or so, especially a variety called ‘Zebrina’. High mallows are much like hollyhocks except a little more elegant in appearance and a bit more compact. ‘Zebrina’ grows two to four feet tall, with lavender flowers striped in darkest red. The plants are sun-loving, short-lived perennials that will work in large containers. In the garden, ‘Zebrina’ looks best when planted in odd-numbered groups.
Prairie mallow or Sidalcea is sometimes known as “miniature hollyhock.” Like some other mallows, the plants tend to form clumps when they are well situated.
The leaves are slightly to deeply lobed, depending on proximity to the ground, but almost no one buys any mallow solely for its foliage. Sidalcea also grows two to four feet tall, with erect spikes of pink flowers that appear in summer. Though the flowers have the typical hollyhock configuration, they are more delicate in appearance. “Elsie Heugh’, winner of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit (AGM), is my favorite sidalcea because of its elegant fringed petals.
No good flower garden should be without some kind of mallow. The problem—at least in my garden—is stopping with one.