Alcea rosea 'Crème de Cassis'

Alcea rosea 'Crème de Cassis' is a variety of hollyhock with a deliciously fruity flowering, shorter than the 'Chater's' varieties for example. Its floral spikes are generously adorned with whimsical flowers, single or double, with a blackcurrant sorbet colour, almost white on the edges, sometimes revealing their pale yellow hearts. This perennial plant often cultivated as a biennial, iconic of English cottage gardens, is wonderful at the back of borders, or to cover the walls of a closed garden. Give it sun, a well-drained soil not too dry, and the shelter of a wall, or a bed of low bushes to protect its flower columns from strong winds. This variety, often offered as seeds, reseeds quite faithfully in the garden. It is one of the most beautiful flowers of summer!

The hollyhock is also known by its Latin name Althaea rosea, and its vernacular names adopt all the accents of our regions: it is called Passe-rose, Rose à bâton, Rose papale or primerose. From the Malvaceae family, it originates from Asia Minor and is often naturalized in slightly wild gardens, fallow fields, heaps of soil. A plant of limestone and sometimes stony soils, the hollyhock is tolerant and easy to grow everywhere. Its taproot does not appreciate being disturbed: choose its location carefully and do not disturb it anymore.

'Crème de Cassis' is an improved variety of this wild flower. It is an erect plant, usually not branched, which can reach 1.50m (5ft) to 1.80m (6ft) in height when flowering. It forms a rosette of rounded leaves with 5 or 7 lobes, from which emerges a robust floral stem, whose growth is very rapid. This inflorescence in spikes is covered with large buds that blossom, staggered from June-July to August-September, and from the bottom to the top, into large ephemeral flowers with single to double corollas on the same stem, whose texture resembles crepe. They display a lovely hue, generally bicolour, with the outer petals quickly fading to a very pale mauve-pink. Throughout this period, they will attract bees and butterflies to your garden. The flowering gives way to numerous fruits filled with seeds that spontaneously reseed in the most unexpected areas, which it chooses itself: at the base of walls, in poor and stony soils, cracks in walls, etc...

Very common in abandoned gardens or fallow fields in our countryside, the hollyhock is often cultivated at the back of borders or against a wall to protect it from strong winds. The fresh colour of this selection will allow you to create superb associations with light-flowering perennials such as Gauras, salvias, bellflowers, Monardas, hybrid mulleins, or the royal lily for its fragrance, all of which are easy plants to grow in most of our gardens. The hollyhock is an edible plant, its flower buds can be eaten raw in salads and the young leaves raw or cooked.

Hollyhock is both ornamental and medicinal. Oil with drying properties can be extracted from its seeds. Rich in mucilage, it has soothing, emollient, expectorant, laxative, and appetizing properties, which are milder compared to those of its cousin the Marshmallow (Althea officinalis) used by herbalists.