Now that many of you – including Charlotte and me – have had
several months to enjoy various kinds of summer flowers ranging
from annuals to biennials to perennials, you begin to evaluate,
to choose favorites and to plan for next summer. Perhaps some
produced extravagant color with a minimum of attention while
others surprised you with their natural attraction to
hummingbirds and butterflies.
It took the recent wedding of my nephew, Keith Neumann, and
having wonderful talks with my two brothers, Richard and Leo, and
my sister, Linda, to bring back memories of my parents in
Kewaunee and their superb flower gardens. They too had obvious
favorites that I clearly recall were highlights of their garden
from year to year.
Some that I can so vividly remember are their tuberous
begonias, roses, irises, delphiniums, gladiola, hollyhocks,
bleeding hearts and petunias. My parents were forever trading
plants with their close friends. Company would arrive and, if the
flowering season was in progress, a long tour of the garden was
in order. Common expressions were, "Oh, you must have some of
this," or, "do you suppose that when you are dividing your plants
this fall we could get some of this or that?"
My dad had a magical touch with tuberous begonias, and one of
his pride and joys was the terraced bed along the north side of
our house where he carefully "nursed" between 50 and 75 or these
striking and colorful plants. Another challenge he enjoyed was
his Spartan rose tree which grew to a height of around six feet
and which, in order for it to survive the winter, had to be dug
out of the ground, laid on its side, then carefully mounded over,
insulated and covered. He referred to it as his "rose grave."
Perhaps their hollyhocks were my soaring favorites. High
rising, delightfully old-fashioned, appearing like towering
exclamation points, how could they possibly escape not only our
attention but that of the bees and hummingbirds as well? I think
my folks liked them too because they are among the most robust of
all perennials. At least that’s how we consider the perennial
hollyhocks that grow quite rampantly and freely in our front
yard.
Those that grew in my parents’ garden were situated along a
two-foot stone wall along the west border of the property.
Immediately to the west, on our neighbors' land, grew several
tall Norway spruces that not only gave our tall garden flowers
protection from strong winds but also harbored teeming thousands
of midges in early spring that attracted many migrating warblers.
Chances are the hollyhocks we came to enjoy so much were what
might be considered to be a single-flowered "farmyard strain" and
which my dad got from his home farm near Slovan. I distinctly
remember them growing there too.
The only colors of those tall dramatic "accent points" I
recall were shades of pink to rose, tending to red and white.
Today the flower catalogs list a number of so-called reliable
colors including crimson, pink, rose, salmon-pink, scarlet,
yellow and white. Also listed are doubles as well as singles. One
catalog lists an appealing annual hollyhock, "Peaches ‘n Dreams,"
that will produce double blossoms within eight weeks of sowing
the seeds.
It is thought that the hollyhock had been in cultivation in
China perhaps a thousand years before it was introduced into
England in 1573. Little wonder it qualified so admirably as being
one of the oldest of cultivated flowers, one having real
country hospitality with an old-fashioned feel.
The name hollyhock is from "holy hoc," later changed to
hollyhock. "Hoc" refers to the mallows, one of which is the
common garden hollyhock, Althea rosea. Althea (accent on
the second syllable) is the Greek name of the marshmallow,
Althea officinalis, also called sweatweed, a
perennial herb of three to four feet, having one-inch pink
flowers, that is native to Europe and has become naturalized in
the salt marshes of eastern U.S. Your garden catalogs will
probably give the genus name of hollyhocks as Alcea and I
don’t know why.
A hollyhock I have learned about, and hope to obtain someday,
is referred to as the Priscilla hollyhock and can be traced to
the Cherokee Indians in Georgia many years ago. A slave girl with
Cherokee blood by the name of Priscilla was brought north by
her new owner to his home near Mulkeytown, Illinois in 1838. It
was she who brought seeds of the attractive hollyhocks with
her and planted them. The plant is described as having true
hollyhock leaves and growing from 38-54 inches. This strain has a
rosy pink and a lighter pink with deep maroon veins in the
five-petaled, quarter-sized flowers.
Do any of you by chance happen to know the official flower of
Madison, Wisconsin? It is the Babcock hollyhock, named to honor
Dr. Stephen M. Babcock who invented in 1889 at the UW Madison’s
College of Agriculture an inexpensive and easy method to test
cows’ milk for butterfat content.
Long live the showy, splendid, towering hollyhocks!
Roy and a favorite deep pink, single-flowered, 10-ft tall hollyhock.
This column appeared in the Door County Advocate
on 09/15/2000.
© Copyright 2000 Roy Lukes. All rights reserved.
