Magenta to Pink 



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 curl- 

 ing stigmas. The leaves of this spreading plant, which are nearly 

 round, with five to nine shallow, saw-edged lobes, are thin, and fur- 

 nished with long petioles ; whereas the flowers which spring from 

 their axils keep close to the main stem. Usually there are about fif- 

 teen 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 xxx. 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 East- 

 ern, 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, 



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