CLXVI. — THE COMMON MALLOW. 
Malva sylvestris Linne. 
T HE genus Malva takes its name, as we have seen, from the Greek [xaXa^r /, 
malache , which refers to the emollient properties of its mucilaginous juice. It 
is sometimes difficult to accept seriously etymologies propounded even by authorities, 
as, for instance, when Dr. Prior derives Hock , an old name for the Mallow, from the 
Latin Alcea, and suggests that the Holli- of Hollihock is the Latin caulis, referring 
either to the tall stem, or to the cabbage-like flowers of the double varieties. In 
this commonest species of the genus it may be noted that sylvestris is very generally 
employed by botanists merely in the sense of “ wild,” as opposed to kortensis, 
belonging to the garden, or sativa, sown, and that it is not meant to suggest any 
connection with woods. 
Malva includes a small number of species of herbaceous plants, natives of the 
North Temperate region of the Old World, although all our three British species 
have been introduced unintentionally, as weeds of cultivation, into the United States. 
The distinctive botanical character of the genus is the epicalyx of three distinct 
leaves or bracteoles. The flowers secrete honey and the gynaeceum consists of a 
ring of numerous one-seeded carpels round a short, thick axis, with a separate 
style to each carpel. 
Our three British species are all perennial, but are sharply contrasted in general 
habit and in floral characters. 
The Common Mallow ( Malva sylvestris Linne) is a robust, erect, branched and 
widely spreading plant, from one to three feet in height, though in some poor soils 
it will lie prostrate. Its long, slightly-branched tap-root will secure its position on 
the loose rubbish of a roadside heap or the sand by the sea, and the plant often 
becomes sub-dominant in waste-places before much other vegetation has made its 
appearance. Its leaves are rounded, palmately veined, and from three- to seven- 
lobed, crenate-serrate, and from two to three inches across. They are plicate in the 
bud and their stalks, like those of the flowers, are downy or hairy. A somewhat 
dull blue-green at first, they become a deeper green later, and may often be seen in 
autumn thickly covered with the brown spots of the parasitic fungus Puccinia 
malvacearum Montagne. This rust, a native of Chile, spread first to Australia, soon 
afterwards entering Europe through France ; and at one time its ravages made the 
cultivation of the Hollyhock almost impossible. The numerous flowers of the 
Mallow, produced from June to September, and each from an inch to an inch and a 
half across, are borne in axillary unilateral cymes, opening in succession. Their five 
divergent obcordate petals are generally a light rose-colour marked by dark crimson 
veins or honey-guides ; but the ground-colour may be more blue or lilac, or white ; 
and it is rather from the general effect of the mingling tints that we have taken 
our notion of the colour which bears the French name of the plant, mauve. Honey 
