gardening with nature

The dramatic Alcea rosea nigra is only one face of the hollyhock.

Lately, I’ve been pulled in by the incredible variety of hollyhock shapes and colors Even the leaves can vary, depending on the type of hollyhock. This six-part series will take a close look at some of the hollyhocks I know personally, as well as hollyhock background, uses, symbolism, and culture.

Hollyhocks are often discussed—and even sold–en masse, with varieties and colors and cultivars lumped together. They deserve better. They are beautiful, of ancient lineage, medicinal, and at least somewhat edible. And their usefulness goes even further: they’ve been pressed into service for making and dyeing cloth, not to mention screening outhouses.

If you check sources, you will find many authoritative opinions on where hollyhocks come from. Unfortunately, a lot of these opinions will be different. Syria, Palestine, the Middle East in general, India, southern Europe, and China are some of the contestants. And the winner is…China, because it is mentioned by a more than one reliable source, and details about its uses and cultivation in China are given. Because Maureen Gilmer adds that there are pictures of hollyhocks in 9th century Chinese art—documentary evidence. And because China makes sense as a starting place for a plant which seems to have followed the Silk Road.

If anyone knows of an authoritative source or three which mention the same country of origin for hollyhocks, I’d like to hear about it. Wherever they actually originate from, hollyhocks have made themselves at home in many parts of the world. And they’ve been helped by some of the most prolific seed-distributers: people who like them, and carry them long distances on the strength of it.

If you have sun, you can easily bring hollyhocks into your own part of the world. (You can sometimes persuade them to bloom in semi-shade, but it’s a chancy thing.) Once established, they settle in and re-seed themselves in the pleasantest way, making comfortable broad-leaved clumps that spread and grace a wall without ever invading. And they give an incredible show for very little care.

Hollyhocks also adapt beautifully to containers, as long as the containers are deep enough. But you must either have really serious supports (hollyhocks can go to six feet high, and they are not wispy plants), or something for them to lean on—a wall, a tree, shrubby plants.

In a container, hollyhocks are a great green groundcover for summer bulbs such as lilies, glads, and irises. They can also intermingle with cool-loving plants such as pansies and campanulas. When the heat comes on, the hollyhock will shade them and hopefully preserve them. When the weather cools, you can judiciously pluck a big hollyhock leaf or two so the pansies (and so on) can grow through for a fall and/or early-spring show.

If it freezes in your area, the hollyhock greens will die back—but they come back very early. Supposedly an annual, in my area, hollyhocks tend to be short-lived perennials, dying back each fall and springing up when the weather shows the slightest signs of warming the following year. Winters in my area are mild, by which I mean: it freezes, but not all the time, and we rarely have a hard freeze. In colder winters, some hollyhocks may be truly annual.

A less-known variety of hollyhock, Alcea ficifolia, is much more inclined to be perennial. This variety has been crossed with A. rosea types, and that may be why some strains of hollyhocks are more perennial than others. I’ll write more about Alcea ficifolia later in this series—but for now, I’m going to continue with the glories of the black hollyhock.

Later stage: after the pollination is over

Some might say that “black hollyhock” isn’t the right name for this flower. A gardening friend of mine remarked that these hollyhocks were eggplant-colored—which is exactly right. One cultivar name I’ve heard for this variety (or something very like it) is ‘Black Watchman’; I suppose ‘Eggplant’ would be a little less glamorous. Me, I just bought the seeds as Alcea rosea nigra. In a way, this is the silliest name of all: it parses out like this: Alcea– from a Latin word meaning “wholesome” or “healing”. Rosea – red (actually red-purple, the color of ancient roses). Nigra – black. Altogether: Healing red-purple plant that’s black.

My 1947 Sunset Flower Garden Book says that if you cut back the stems, you can get a second flowering in late summer and early fall. But I need some of the seed to ripen, so I can pass it around to friends (one of the best ways to leave a nice legacy and incidentally make sure you have a supply yourself, should your own plants give up the ghost). So some of my flower stalks, at least, are not going to be cut back until the seed ripens.

Ripe seedpods are one of the pleasures of hollyhocks, in their own quiet way as pleasing as the flowers themselves. I’m certainly not the first to notice this: Gerard (late 1500s) and Crispin de Pass (1614) said that the seed-pod was ‘like in shape unto small cheeses….from which this plant is called Keeskens cruyt by the Dutch.’

Next post: burgundy hollyhocks. And how they got into European and British gardens.

References:

Mrs. C. F. Leyel, Officier de l’Academie Francaise, Fellow of the Royal Institute, Elixirs of Life, first pub. 1948 Faber and Faber; pb reprint 1987

J.L Hudson Rare Seed Supplement #2008-A

Dictionary.com, Random House and American Heritage dictionaries.

Maureen Gilmer, “Hollyhocks, an American Garden Staple”

Sunset Flower Garden Book, Lane Publishing Company, 1947

Cucuzzi in the evening.

Cucuzzi in the morning.

Cucuzzi all around: ornamental, fragrant, edible, and a rapid grower.

Because this vine is an edible gourd, it takes the same rich soil, water, and heat that garden squashes do. But its flowers are more delicate, and, like all gourds, white-at least in the evening, when it first opens and gives you a chance to inhale a fresh, gentle fragrance. If you plant them by your door, as I did, they can greet you coming home from work. By morning, they’ve turned a gentle pale tan.

Cucuzzi seeds are different from squash seeds, too: more or less rectangular, with stubby little antennae on each end.

Unlike squash, the smaller leaves of cucuzzi won’t overpower everything else.

In fact, I think they mix quite fetchingly with these Oriental lilies. (I’m a sucker for tendrils.)

I first heard about cucuzzi in The 20-Minute Gardener, Tom Christopher and Marty Asher’s treatise on how not to let gardening take over your life. Gardeners who take things too seriously should be laid in a hammock with this book and a nice glass of lemon balm iced tea.

The only bad thing about The 20-Minute Gardener is that it lacks an index, so I must flip through page after page to find the entry. And after some flipping, I did find one, but not one with the recipe I remembered. Oh well.

These Italian-bred young gourds can be eaten like summer squash. Rumor has it that they are even more flavorful than regular summer squash, but so far I’ve had only male flowers, so I can’t report. I am happy to find a vine that looks as if it’s going over the top of my trellis-shade, fragrant flowers, and fruit all in one season.

And I really like my garden chair.

References:

Tom Christopher and Marty Asher, The 20-Minute Gardener, Random House, 1997

JL Hudson - you can get cucuzzi seeds here.

Bearded iris foliage with a heart-shaped leaf of Dioscorea batatas vine.

According to feng shui, spiky foliage denotes activity, energy, and excitement in the garden. It’s associated with the yang principle, which is the outgoing, upthrusting, active aspect of life. Everything shiny, bright, light, or pointed represents the yang principle.

The yin principle, which is relaxing, inviting, and nurturing, is represented by soft or dull or dark foliage, broad or rounded leaves, and broad or rounded plants.

While I wouldn’t want to have all spiky foliage in my garden (and any feng shui practitioner would caution against it), some of my recent and ongoing plant choices have led to more spiky foliage in my garden. And I’m enjoying it.

The iris in the header photo is one of the legacies of a trip to a local grower. I’m not wild about bearded iris (I hope I don’t get a lot of flak for this), but the types I saw there opened my eyes to the possibilities of iris, and I ordered many more than I had planned to get.

Well, when have I ever gone to a place purveying plants, and failed to order more than I’d planned to get?

So I stuck them where there was space in various containers, and I’m afraid I didn’t label them too carefully, so I can’t tell you which this one is until it flowers. While I was watering, I noticed how sweetly the fan of iris leaves fell, and how nicely they were outlined by the light. They are accompanied in this picture by the heart-shaped leaf of a yam vine (Dioscorea batatas).

This year I experimented with japonica corn, an ornamental variety. In feng shui, these leaves would be considered a bit less yang than the iris leaves: they’re a bit wavy, and bits of them (although you can’t see them in this picture) curve gracefully down.

My abiding love for lilies includes their foliage. Yang aspects of trumpet lily leaves would be their shininess and spikiness. The round spiral pattern of the leaves on the stem, though, would be considered yin: peaceful, restful, nurturing. This Lilium regale (regale lily; not a hard translation) has long since flowered, but still contributes its good looks to a jumble of plants that includes some sprouting native oaks.

This year I got a lot of glads–flowers I’d often scorned until I tried them, especially some of the older varieties.

What I didn’t expect was that I’d like the foliage. And here’s a perfect example of that interplay of yin and yang that is recommended in feng shui: round, small rose leaves (with those little slightly-yang toothed edges) shadowing the tall, spiky glad foliage.

Actually, if you’ve been paying attention, all of these pictures are about the interplay of yin and yang. How could they help but be? It’s what makes the world go around.

Ricinus communis ‘Carmencita’: the spectacular castor bean pods almost obscure the inconspicuous flowers, just visible below.

Sad news. Gophers and castor oil do mix. At least in some gardens.

Last report, I was experimenting with saturating some cutting-flower bed soils with castor oil solution. This had worked for me before in my tulip beds, where I didn’t water in summer.

I was also keeping tabs on a friend’s garden: she planted castor bean plants around the perimeter of her garden in New Mexico, and had good results keeping gophers away. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be working in her garden here. Gophers are happily working away amongst these castor bean plants. (They are ‘Carmencita’ plants, by the way, for those of you who just want to grow them because they look so cool.)

I had a theory going for awhile: the studies attesting to the efficacy of castor oil sprays on the soil were done by the University of Michigan. And the woman who recommended it in Gardener’s Supply (a catalogue where I’ve found lots of useful and interesting, well, garden supplies) is also from the midwest.

So my theory was this: in the midwest, where it rains all summer (to excess, this summer), the soil is always moist. The midwest also has a lot of naturally fluffy soil (where it hasn’t been eroded away by bad agribusiness practices). That means that there are green things growing in fluffy moist soil all over. So a gopher has a choice between plants in fluffy moist soil without nasty castor oil, or with it. Any sensible gopher would choose without.

In my dry-summer area, though, the only place you see green plants in summer is where people are watering or where there’s a creek. And while there are some deposits of naturally fluffy soil, they are few. Clay, decomposed granite, and composed granite are the lot of most of us. If we want fluffy soil, we have to work at it. So in my area, if a gopher wants nice fluffy easy soil to burrow through, and moisture and plants, it’s most likely going to find them in a garden. And nowhere else.

The thing that throws a wrench in this theory is the New Mexico story. New Mexico has dry summers, too, and as far as I know is not known for fluffy soil. (If I’m wrong about this, let me know.) So why did the castor bean plants work there? Was it just that the gophers hadn’t found that garden yet? (It does take them awhile.) Or something else?

Life is an ever-turning mystery.

Another friend of mine, who has a master’s in agriculture, gave me some things to think about when I relayed this story to her. Was the type of gopher different in the places where the castor oil was effective? That could be crucial. Do all cultivars of castor bean have the same amount of toxins? It is often true that medicinal plants that are bred to have better looks lose some of the medicinal qualities. (Yarrow is just one example of this.)

I took her advice and delved a little deeper: it turns out the University of Michigan study was for moles, not gophers, and Glenn Dudderer is testing it as a chipmunk and squirrel repellent.

But, you will notice, not as a gopher repellent. And even as a mole repellent, castor oil seems to have gotten mixed reviews: Mole Patrol is now the latest in anti-mole materiel. And even the Gardener’s Supply catalogue now concentrates on moles and downplays the gophers when it comes to castor-oil repellents.

Even though it might not be the heavenly gopher cure-all, castor bean plants are really beautiful. Just be aware that, though the oil is edible, and has many medicinal uses, every other part of the plant is highly poisonous. (In fact, I read a gruesome true story of how a woman poisoned her husband by putting the crushed-up beans in his food. Truly a case of an unfortunate U.S. cultural trait: kill first, talk about it later.) Don’t plant them where small children can investigate the pretty seedpods and attractive leaves.

If you have success in keeping gophers out of your garden with castor bean plants or castor oil, let me know. I’m still trying to figure out why they work in some circumstances, and not others.

References:

Gardener’s Supply catalogue

Herbalhut.com, “Natural Animal Repellents”

Michigan State University Extension: Pests

Laure Capouya, MS Agriculture, Davis

Clusiana tulip opening out. This bulb is named after Clusius ,a famous botanist who grew it in the Leiden Botanical Gardens in the late 1500s/early 1600s. The much more common (and much cheaper) Tulipa clusianus var. chrysantha has yellow interior and edging, instead of white. (For a rundown on a pale yellow cultivar of chrysantha called ‘Cynthia’, chcek out this site.)

McClure & Zimmerman is a place where you’ll find bulbs you won’t see everywhere. I know I’ve said that about all the catalogues I’ve reviewed, and it’s true about every one. This is part of the reason I’m fond of these catalogues. That and the fact that they all offer a wide variety of many kinds of bulbs.

McClure & Zimmerman has a heavy emphasis on species bulbs, and they also provide thoughtful information on bulbs for warm-winter areas. I’m not in a warm-winter area, but if you are, try bulb-shopping here. You can either try special mixes of narcissus or tulips that don’t require chilling, or your can read through the selections and look for “no cold period required” and “perennializes/naturalizes in the south”.

This is a real service to those who believe they can’t grow any tulips or narcissus. The tulip varieties for warm winters are generally the smaller species types. They don’t have the big-splash appeal of their flashier sisters, but they are charming, and sometimes fragrant. They may also perennialize well in no-chill winter areas. (After all, they come from rocky cliffs in mountains or untended wild meadows near the Mediterranean and Black Seas, so they don’t get a lot of coddling there.)

Warm-winter narcissus are not necessariy small, but tend toward certain breeds: jonquil or tazetta chlorophyll is often present in the line, although some of them look very much like the typical trumpet daffodil. I apologize for not having pictures. It is my experience that warm-winter bulbs don’t perennialize well in my chill-winter garden; I get one or maybe two years of them, and that’s it.

They might do better in the ground (most of my bulbs are in containers), since there are some tazetta daffodils that have naturalized in a nearby town. But that area has a noticeably warmer climate; it’s about a month ahead of me in spring and noticeably warmer in winter. Never mind. I get to grow all those other bulbs that warm-winter growers can’t.

The fritillary section has varieties that are hard to find, and the species lily selection is the best I have seen in a single place. I have to admit, though, that my luck with these fritillaries and lilies has been bad. Since species plants tend to be particular in their needs, this might well laid up to me and not the bulbs. I’m just saying. And it’s also true that, while two of them faded away, one of the species cyclamen I got from McClure and Zimmerman has spread, seeded itself, and bloomed in fall for years without any particular help from me.

In their summer catalogue, you’ll find species and heirlooms in the gladiolus department. Never believed a glad could be dainty and woodsy? Check this out.

Gladiolus x colvillei ‘The Bride’, introduced about 1870.

Here’s a warning, though: these color photos are all you’ll get. McClure and Zimmerman has beautiful line drawings and occasional black-and-white photos, but it’s a strictly not-coated-stock kind of catalogue.

For some of us, that just allows for a little extra room to dream.