More Mallows

A few days ago, en route to Kentle Wood, I paused to photograph a plant of Common Mallow, Malva sylvestris. It gets its name because...well...because it is common.

Common Mallow in Brown's Road, Daventry. 26 June, 2020

Chris and I have been a bit cooped up over the last 72 hours due to a number of heavy downpours, but today we managed to get our walk in, and in so doing saw yet more mallows.


The first, growing beside a footpath, was Musk Mallow, Malva moschata, easily recognised by its deeply divided leaves. Its leaves and flowers apparently have a musky fragrance but I confess I have never detected it.

The leaves of Musk Mallow are deeply divided.

Worcester Way, Daventry. 20 June, 2020

It has, in recent years , become popular as a cottage garden plant so the presence of this specimen may be from such a source. In the west of Northamptonshire the species is uncommon as a wild plant, not least because alkaline soils, which it seems to prefer, are largely absent.




The flowers of the Musk Mallow were barely open.

The next mallow to be seen was definitely not a garden escape. Dwarf Mallow, Malva neglecta, is a rather weedy plant with a sprawling habit. It is commoner than Malva moschata but less so than M. sylvestris.

The flowers of Dwarf Mallow are small and so pale that they can appear

almost white. Christchurch Drive, Daventry. 20 June, 2020

The flowers are pale and quite small for a mallow. The leaves are rather rounded and an old name for this species is Malva rotundifolia. In his 1930  'Flora of Northamptonshire ...' Druce describes it, in a curiously dated term, as viatical, referring to the fact that it is often found by waysides.

The famous botanical taxonomist John Hutchinson  regarded the mallows as a very highly evolved group.






It could be argued that the Mallow Family, the Malvaceae, is not a significant part of the British flora, but on the world stage it is a different matter, as it contains Okra, Durians, Cacao, Theobroma cacao and Cotton, Gossypium species.


Postscript


On 22 June I took a stroll around the Drayton area of Daventry and found that Musk Mallows were being used extensively in front gardens in Lake Crescent.