Hollyhock

The common hollyhock is an ornamental flowering plant of the mallow family, brought to Europe from south-western China in or before the fifteenth century. William Turner, a herbalist of the time, gave it the name holyoke, from which the English name comes. Kynes describes towering stalks six or seven feet tall, with bowl-shaped flowers of five overlapping petals from white to pink to purplish red, and large heart-shaped leaves. Like other mallows, it was used in China, the Middle East and Europe for ailments including snakebites and scorpion stings, and by the Middle Ages it was believed to protect from the devil. It was the medieval commoner's rose of the cottage garden. A seventeenth-century English recipe lists it in fairy oil, which anointed on the eyes made the fae visible. With the right incantation the oil also conjured a faery called Elaby Gathon, whom nannies asked to guard sleeping babies from changelings. Kynes keeps a photograph of hollyhocks through major life changes, and after a move crumbles dried flowers around the new home, inside and out.