The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Malva
Also called Cheeseweed, Mallows
Malva is a genus of annual, biennial and perennial herbs and some woody plants, with lobed leaves and small pink, lilac, purple or white flowers. Common garden members are grown from seed sown outdoors in early spring, and they often self-seed freely.
Malva is a genus of herbaceous or woody, annual, biennial, and perennial plants in the family Malvaceae. It is one of several closely related genera in the family to bear the common English name mallow. The genus is widespread throughout the temperate, subtropical and tropical regions of Africa, Asia and Europe.
The leaves are alternate, palmately lobed. The flowers are from 0.5–5 cm diameter, with five pink, lilac, purple or white petals.
Cultivation is by sowing the seeds directly outdoors in early spring. The seed is easy to collect, and they will often spread themselves by seed.
Some Malva species are invasive weeds, particularly in the Americas where, excluding those species native to Baja California and California, most were introduced.
Malva olbia · Malva trimestris · Vervain mallow · Tree Mallow · Island mallow · Musk mallow · Cretan Hollyhock · Common mallow · Bull mallow · Spotted Stalked Tree Mallow · Low mallow · Sea Mallow
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Malva by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
