(Hibiscus Moscheutos) Mallow family
Flowers - Very large, clear rose pink, sometimes white, often
with crimson center, 4 to 7 in. across, solitary, or clustered on
peduncles at summit of stems. Calyx 5-cleft, subtended by
numerous narrow bractlets; 5 large, veined petals; stamens
united
into a valvular column bearing anthers on the outside for much of
its length; 1 pistil partly enclosed in the column, and with five
button-tipped stigmatic branches above. Stem: 4 to 7 ft. tall,
stout, from perennial root. Leaves: 3 to 7 in. long, tapering,
pointed, egg-shaped, densely white, downy beneath lower leaves,
or sometimes all, lobed at middle.
Preferred Habitat - Brackish marshes, riversides, lake shores,
saline situations.
Flowering Season - August-September.
Distribution - Massachusetts to the Gulf of Mexico, westward to
Louisiana; found locally in the interior, but chiefly along
Atlantic seaboard.
Stately ranks of these magnificent flowers, growing among the
tall sedges and "cat-tails" of the marshes, make the most
insensate traveler exclaim at their amazing loveliness. To reach
them one must don rubber boots and risk sudden seats in the
slippery ooze; nevertheless, with spade in hand to give one
support, it is well worthwhile to seek them out and dig up some
roots to transplant to the garden. Here, strange to say, without
salt soil or more water than the average garden receives from
showers and hose, this handsomest of our wild flowers soon makes
itself delightfully at home under cultivation. Such good, deep
earth, well enriched and moistened, as the hollyhock thrives in,
suits it perfectly. Now we have a better opportunity to note how
the bees suck the five nectaries at the base of the petals and
collect the abundant pollen of the newly opened flowers, which
they perforce transfer to the five button-shaped stigmas
intentionally impeding the entrance to older blossoms. Only its
cousin the hollyhock, a native of China, can vie with the
rose-mallow's decorative splendor among the shrubbery; and the
ROSE OF CHINA (Hibiscus Rosa-Sinensis), cultivated in greenhouses
here, eclipse it in the beauty of the individual blossom. This
latter flower, whose superb scarlet corolla stains black, is
employed by the Chinese married women, it is said, to discolor
their teeth; but in the West Indies it sinks to even greater
ignominy as a dauber for blacking shoes!
MARSH MALLOW (Althaea officinalis), a name frequently misapplied
to the swamp rose-mallow, is properly given to a much smaller
pink flower, measuring only an inch and a half across at the
most, and a far rarer one, being a naturalized immigrant from
Europe found only in the salt marshes from the Massachusetts
coast to New York. It is also known as WYMOTE. This is a bushy,
leafy plant, two to four feet high, and covered with velvety down
as a protection against the clogging of its pores by the moisture
arising from its wet retreats. Plants that live in swamps must
"perspire" freely and keep their pores open. From the marsh
mallow's thick roots the mucilage used in confectionery is
obtained, a soothing demulcent long esteemed in medicine. Another
relative, the OKRA or GUMBO PLANT of vegetable gardens (Hibiscus
esculentus), has mucilage enough in its narrow pods to thicken a
potful of soup. Its pale yellow, crimson-centered flowers are
quite as beautiful as any hollyhock, but not nearly so
conspicuous, because of the plant's bushy habit of growth. In
spite of its name, the ALTHAEA of our gardens, or ROSE OF SHARON
(Hibiscus Syriacus), is not so closely allied to Althaea
officinalis as to the swamp rose-mallow.
Another immigrant from Europe and Asia sparingly naturalized in
waste places and roadsides in Canada, the United States, and
Mexico is the COMMON HIGH MALLOW, CHEESEFLOWER, or ROUND DOCK
(Malva sylvestris). Its purplish-rose flowers, from which the
French have derived their word mauve, first applied to this
plant, appear in small clusters on slender pedicels from the leaf
axils along a leafy, rather weak, but ascending stem, maybe only
a foot high, or perhaps a yard, throughout the summer months. The
leaf, borne on a petiole two to six inches long, is divided into
from five to nine shallow, angular, or rounded saw-edged lobes.
Country children eat unlimited quantities of the harmless little
circular, flattened "cheeses" or seed vessels, a characteristic
of the genus Malva. Since the flower invites a great number of
insects to feast on its nectar, secreted in five little pits
(protected for them from the rain by hairs at the base of the
petals), and compels its visitors to wipe off pollen brought from
the pyramidal group of anthers in a newly opened blossom to the
exserted, radiating stigmas of older ones, the mallow produces
more cheeses than all the dairies of the world. So rich is its
store of nectar that the hive-bee, shut out from a legitimate
entrance to the flower when it closes in the late afternoon,
climbs up the outside of the calyx, and inserting his tongue
between the five petals, empties the nectaries one after another
- intelligent rogue that he is!
The LOW, DWARF, or RUNNING MALLOW (M. rotundifolia), a very
common little weed throughout our territory, Europe, and Asia,
depends scarcely at all upon insects to transfer its pollen, as
might be inferred from its unattractive pale blue to white
flowers, that measure only about half an inch across. In default
of visitors, its pollen-laden anthers, instead of drooping to get
out of the way of the stigmas, as in the showy high mallow,
remain extended so as to come in contact with the rough, sticky
sides of the long curling stigmas. The leaves of this spreading
plant, which are nearly round, with five to nine shallow,
saw-edged lobes, are thin, and furnished with long petioles;
whereas the flowers which spring from their axils keep close to
the main stem. Usually there are about fifteen rounded carpels
that go to make up the Dutch, doll, or fairy cheeses, as the seed
vessels are called by children. Only once is the mallow mentioned
in the Bible, and then as food for the most abject and despised
poor (Job 30: 4); but as eighteen species of mallow grow in
Palestine, who is the higher critic to name the species eaten?
Occasionally we meet by the roadside in Canada, the Eastern,
Middle, and Southern States pink, sometimes white, flowers, about
two inches across, growing in small clusters at the top of a stem
a foot or two high, the whole plant emitting a faint odor of
musk. If the stem leaves are deeply divided into several narrow,
much-cleft segments, and the little cheeses are densely hairy, we
may safely call the plant MUSK MALLOW (M. moschata), and expect
to find it blooming throughout the summer.
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Next: MARSH ST.JOHN'SWORT
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