Common Mallow, Malva sylvestris. Photographed from the North Norfolk Coast Path several years ago, looking towards Sheringham.
Common Mallow, Malva sylvestris, is one of our commonest wild flowers and can be found in most of England and Wales. In Scotland and Ireland it is commonest in the south and east. It is a hardy, drought tolerant perennial herb that prefers to grow in full sun in well-drained, often nutrient-enriched soils.
Seen on a bike ride: roadside Common Mallow, Malva sylvestris. Stratton Strawless, Norfolk, 19th June 2022.
Common Mallow grows throughout Norfolk and I often encounter it on my summer bike rides and walks. Its pretty flowers, which peak in June and early July, brighten up our road verges, the edges of fields and waste ground. In Norwich it grows in cracks in pavements and is a “weed” on our allotment. (I like the flowers but I remove most of my plants as they soon produce a deep root and outcompete the more delicate vegetables.)
“Five notched petals, each a vivid pink with darker pink stripes. Each stamen has indigo coloured anthers, bearing white grains of pollen.” Common Mallow, Malva sylvestris. Stratton Strawless, Norfolk, 19th June 2022.
Common Mallow plants grow to about 1.2 metres (4 feet) tall. They have palmately lobed, crinkled leaves (described as “a five lobed pentagon… that can be crinkly“) and flowers with five notched petals, each a vivid pink with darker pink stripes (note 1). At the centre of the flower are the stamens and the way these are held is “similar to the way Radio Telescopes have the aerial at the focal point of the paraboloid“. Each stamen has indigo coloured anthers, bearing white grains of pollen (note 2).
The flowers are followed by lime green, disc shaped seed pods known as “cheeses” that “resemble the shape of a full counter in Trivial Pursuit” and have been compared to truckles of cheese or even pork pies. These ripen to brown and the seeds are soon scattered. Common Mallow reproduces freely from seed.
Stace lists twelve species of Malva in the British Isles, some native and others introduced. He classes Common Mallow (Malva sylvestris) as an archaeophyte-denizen (note 3). The Plantlife website says Malva sylvestris was probably introduced by the Romans. Mallows are members of the Malvaceae, the Mallow family, as is the Hollyhock, Alcea rosea, which I wrote about in November 2015. Both mallows and Hollyhocks are prone to Hollyhock Rust, Puccinia malvacearum.
Malva sylvestris is a native of most of Europe and parts of North Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Libya and Morocco) and Asia (including Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan and Tibet). It has been introduced into parts of eastern Asia, southern Africa and North and South America.
Common Mallow is edible. I quite like nibbling on the young seed pods (“cheeses”), which have a nutty flavour, although extracting the seeds on a larger scale is a bit fiddly. The young leaves can be added to salads where they “make a very acceptable substitute for lettuce” and can be deep fried, when they “puff up like prawn crackers“. Because they are mucilaginous they can be used as a thickener in soups. The flowers can be added to salads to add colour, but not flavour. The Wild Flower Guides website gives a recipe for making mallow “meringues”.
Eating mallows can be traced back to ancient China, when the leaves were an important leafy vegetable prior to the introduction of brassicas. There is a tradition of using the leaves of Malva sylvestris in Italy (in rissotto), in Egypt and Spain and in Palestine (as kubbaizeh) and Israel (as hubeza) (note 4).
The Plants For A Future website lists various medicinal uses for Malva sylvestris, including as a laxative and as a poultice for bruises, inflammations and insect bites. The plant can also be used to produce cream, yellow and green dyes.
The RHS website has a guide to growing Common Mallow in the garden. You can buy Common Mallow seeds and young plants but in many places the plant will find its own way into your garden, or you can gather wild seed.
If you see a Common Mallow with distorted leaves, look underneath a leaf and you may find Umbrella Aphids, whose delightful scientific names is Aphis umbrella. We found ours on a plant by the gates of Earlham Cemetery on Farrow Road in Norwich last October, but the aphids can also be found earlier in the summer and on other species of mallow (note 5).
Umbrella Aphids (Aphis umbrella) on Common Mallow, 4th October 2022.
For an at-a-glance guide to the various species of mallow (Malva and relatives) you may find in East Anglia, I recommend Mike Crewe’s Flora of East Anglia website.
On a dull, cold winter day let dreams of mallows past and to come brighten up your life!
Notes
Note 1 – The colour mauve comes from mauve, the French word for mallow.
Glycosides of the anthocyanin malvidin give Common Mallow flowers their distinctive mauve colour.
In 1856 William Henry Perkin (1838 – 1907) was trying to synthesise the antimalarial drug quinine from aniline when he accidentally produced a synthetic mauve dye, which he named aniline purple. This was later renamed mauveine. Its discovery led to the creation of many other artificial dyes later in the 19th Century.
Note 2 – The Wild Flower Finder website has excellent photographs of Common Mallow.
Note 3 – Clive Stace, “New Flora of the British Isles“, Fourth Edition, 2019. Malva species are listed on pages 400 -403.
Archaeophytes are plants that were introduced by humans prior to 1500; a denizen is fully naturalised plant that is suspected of having been originally introduced.
Stace also lists a hybrid between Common Mallow and Dwarf Mallow (Malva neglecta), found in Middlesex in 2007.
Note 4 – From Stephen Barstow, “Around The World in 80 Plants : An Edible Perennial Vegetable Adventure For Temperate Climates“, Permanent Publications (2014). I highly recommend this guide to edible plants.
A word of caution: avoid eating Common Mallow growing on contaminated soils because it can accumulate heavy metals such as lead and mercury.
Note 5 – The Influential Points website is a fantastic resource for the study of aphids. Many are restricted to specific plants. Once you’ve seen some of the larger species, such as Giant Willow Aphid (Tuberolachnus salignus) you’ll never dismiss aphids as just “greenfly” or “blackfly” again.
