Malva marvelous, malva malevolent

One day I was walking through the glasshouse area of Kew Gardens when I came upon the most beautiful hollyhock I had ever seen. Hollyhocks are among my favorite flowers, and why, I wondered, is this particular form no longer cultivated and offered? It had that large flared petal of the hollyhock and it was a most beautiful yellow, a clear yellow, as if it, the color yellow, were just born, delicate, at the very beginning of its history as "yellow," but when I looked at the label on which its identification was written my whole being was sent a-whir. It was not a hollyhock at all but Gossypium, and its common name is cotton. Cotton all by itself exists in perfection, with malice toward none; in the sharp, swift, even brutal dismissive words of the botanist Oakes Ames, it is reduced to an economic annual, but the tormented, malevolent role it has played in my ancestral history is not forgotten by me.

Jamaica Kincaid, My Garden (Book): (pub. info here).

The flower above isn't a hollyhock, or cotton; it's okra (Abelmoschus esculentus or Hibiscus esculenta). I'm growing it in the raised vegetable beds, in both a regular green-leaved variety and an ornamental variety with red-speckled foliage and red stems. The flowers are beautiful, but elusive. I hardly ever seem to catch them open; the buds always seem to be either just on the verge of opening, or already done and forming fruit. When you see the flower, there's no mistaking the Malvaceae family resemblance. Malvas, I love them all, and they are all over my garden: hollyhocks, annual hibiscus, tender hibiscus, hardy hibiscus, rose-of-sharon, sidalcea, lavatera, and even a Hibiscus trionum (upon which I have conferred the title of Most Beauteous Weed) that hitchhiked in, via the pot of a purchased butterfly weed plant.

The Malvaceae family brings its own complicated freight to my family history. I'm told that my maternal grandfather especially loved hollyhocks (along with amaryllis...and dahlias...and cosmos...and so on...well, at least I can say I come by it honestly), and my mother's native country's national flower is the rose-of-sharon, symbol of perseverance and tenacity (*cough*stubborn hardheadedness*cough*, and I suppose I come by that honestly, too). On my father's side, I'm but five generations removed from enslaved forebears, in plantations in the Mississippi delta on my paternal grandmother's side, and in South Carolina on my paternal grandfather's side, for whom the yellow bloom of cotton would have been anything but benign. And yet they would have grown and eaten okra, indigenous to tropical Africa and cotton's cousin. So Jamaica Kincaid's words above strike a chord with me, as do these:

I had never seen the cotton plant in bloom before. The hollyhock, to which it is related—they are in the same family, Malvaceae—is among my favorite perennials; perhaps the fact that the hollyhock looks like cotton when it is in flower is an explanation; on the other hand, the hollyhock could have been my least favorite perennial for the very same reason. I wait for the unknown expanse called time to let me know.

Comments

[avril]

what an enlightening post and one that furthers my theory that gardening is anything but "just growing flowers." Green things are connectedness that reminds us who we were, who we are, and if we're fortunate, who we will become. And I've lived in the South my whole life and never noticed the blooms on the cotton but I do love to see the fields in the late summer, looking like we had an early snow...

[Chan S.]

Thanks, Avril. These connections fascinate me endlessly, too...

[Lynn S]

Thanks! That's very interesting. I had no idea what a cotton bloom looks like.

[Chan S.]

Thanks, Lynn. Maybe one of these days I'll make a point of actually going to see a cotton field...I'm thinking it might be an emotionally challenging but worthwhile experience.

[Patricia Tryon]

OKRA?! Huh.

[Chan S.]

The leaf shape and growth habit (lanky and twiggy) is almost identical to my annual "sunset" hibiscus (although the hibiscus has a larger and even prettier flower, but which is just as short-lived as the okra flower).

[philippines flower]

Wow! the this flower is so pretty cute i like this,i want that i could also have this on my backyard love this. :)

zaijan