PINK 



ROSE MALLOW. SWAMP MALLOW. 



[PI. cx 

 Hibiscus Moscheiitos. Mallow Family. 



Stem. — Stout and tall; four to eight feet high. Leaves. — The lower 

 three-lobed ; the upper oblong, whitish and downy beneath. Flowers. — 

 Large and showy ; pink. Calyx. — Five-cleft, with a row of narrow bractlets 

 beneath. Corolla. — Of five large petals. Stamens. — Many; on a tube 

 which encloses the lower part of the style. Pistils. — Five ; united into one, 

 with five stigmas which are like pin-heads. 



When the beautiful rose mallow slowly unfolds her pink ban- 

 ner-like petals and admits the eager bee to her stores of golden 

 pollen, then we feel that the summer is far advanced. As truly 

 as the wood anemone and the blood-root seem filled with the 

 essence of spring and the promise of the opening year, so does 

 this stately flower glow with the maturity and fulfilment of late 

 summer. Here is none of the timorousness of the early blossoms 

 which peep shyly out, as if ready to beat a hasty retreat should 

 a late frost overtake them, but rather a calm assurance that the 

 time is ripe, and that the salt marshes and brackish ponds are 

 only awaiting their rosy lining. 



The marsh mallow, whose roots yield the mucilaginous sub- 

 stance utilized in the well-known confection, is Althcea offici- 

 nalis , an emigrant from Europe. It is a much less common 

 plant than the Hibiscus, its pale pink flowers being found in some 

 of the salt marshes of New England and New York. 



The common mallow, Malva rotundifolia, which overruns 

 the country dooryards and village waysides, is a little plant with 

 rounded, heart-shaped leaves and small purplish flowers. It is 

 used by the country people for various medicinal purposes and is 

 cultivated and commonly boiled with meat in Egypt. Job pict- 

 ures himself as being despised by those who had been themselves 

 so destitute as to '' cut up mallows by the bushes ... for 

 their meat." * 



* Job XXX. 4. 



242 



