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 sylvestris
Also called Common Mallow, Tall Mallow, Blue Mallow, Cheeses, Forest Mallow, Garden Mallow, Purple Mallow
High mallow is a vigorous, showy herbaceous perennial (sometimes biennial) with bright mauve-purple flowers, growing 0.9 to 1.5 m tall. It is easy to grow in open, sunny spots and is also a self-seeding wild plant on roadsides and waste ground.
Malva sylvestris is a species of the mallow genus Malva, of which it the type species. Known as common mallow to English-speaking Europeans, it acquired the common names of cheeses, high mallow and tall mallow (mauve des bois by the French) as it migrated from its native home in Western Europe, North Africa and Asia through the English-speaking world.
M. sylvestris is a vigorous plant with showy flowers of bright mauve-purple, with dark veins, standing 0.91–1.22 metres (3–4 ft) high and growing freely in meadows, hedgerows and in fallow fields.
It is often grown as an ornamental plant for its attractive flowers, produced for a long period through the summer. Numerous cultivars have been selected and named.
Cultivars of Malva sylvestris include: 'Annita', 'Aurora', 'Bardsey Blue', 'Blue Fountain', 'Brave Heart', 'Cottenham Blue', 'Gibbortello', 'Harry Hay', 'Highnam', 'Inky Stripe', 'Knockout', 'Magic Hollyhock', 'Mest', 'Mystic Merlin', 'Perry's Blue', 'Purple Satin', 'Richard Perry', 'Tournai', 'Windsor Castle', 'Zebrina' (soft lavender-purple striped with deep maroon veins)
Malva sylvestris spreads itself on waste and rough ground, by roads and railways throughout lowland England, Wales and Channel Islands, Siberia and scattered elsewhere. One of the major areas that it grows in is northeast and central Iran. It is also found in North Africa and grows as a biennial in the Mediterranean; it grows as a perennial elsewhere. It has been introduced to and has become naturalised in eastern Australia, in the United States, Canada, and Mexico as an invasive species.
The young leaves and shoots are edible raw or cooked. M. sylvestris has traditionally been used around the world as a wild food plant, from the Mediterranean and Middle East, including Palestine and Italy, to the Caucasus. In Morocco, Tunisia and Palestine, Malva leaves are steamed with garlic and tomatoes, and eaten as an appetizer or salad. In Egypt, the leaves are made into a stew-like vegetable dish, especially in winter, known as khobeiza, which is similar to Molokheia.
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 sylvestris 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.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
