Alcea rosea Sunshine - Hollyhock

The annual hollyhock or Alcea rosea 'Sunshine' is a sunny and delicate version of the hollyhock that charmingly populates forgotten gardens. From spring to summer, it reaches up towards the sky, gathering all its energy to produce tall stems adorned with ephemeral, single, silky cups of flowers, whose translucent petals enhance a bright and light yellow colour. This robust plant readily self-seeds in the garden. It prefers poor and rocky soils, shows resistance to drought, and prefers warm situations.

The 'Sunshine' hollyhock is also known by its Latin name, Althaea rosea 'Sunshine'. Belonging to the Malvaceae family, it is native to Asia Minor and often naturalized in natural gardens, fallow lands, and mounds of soil. This 'Sunshine' variety is part of an improved series, with plants showing stable colours and proving to be truly perennial and not biennial. It is an upright, generally unbranched plant that can reach a height of 1.50 to 2m (5 to 7ft). It forms a rosette of rounded leaves from which a robust floral stem emerges, with rapid growth. These spike-like inflorescences are covered with large buds that open in a staggered manner from June to August, from bottom to top, into large single flowers that only live for a day. They display a very bright, vivid and light yellow hue, and a texture that allows the green reflections of all the surrounding greenery to shine through. Throughout this period, they attract bees and butterflies to the garden. The flowering gives way to numerous fruits filled with seeds that spontaneously self-seed in the most unexpected areas that this plant chooses itself: at the base of walls, in poor and rocky soils, crevices in walls.

Very common in abandoned gardens or fallow countryside, the hollyhock is often cultivated at the back of flowerbeds or against a wall that protects it from strong winds. The cheerful and very bright colour of this variety will allow you to create superb combinations with pink, black, or white shapes, whether they are single or double. The hollyhock is an edible plant; its flower buds can be consumed raw in salads, and the young leaves can be eaten raw or cooked.

The hollyhock is both ornamental and medicinal. Its seeds produce an oil with drying properties. Rich in mucilage, it has soothing, emollient, expectorant, laxative, and appetizer properties.