A Special Hollyhock.

I am joining in with the favourite flower meme at dangergarden this week with a very special plant.  I have written about it before, but it is so lovely I have to mention it again. It is my favourite flower at the moment.  It has been in bloom for ages. It is a hollyhock which isn’t a hollyhock. In fact there seems to be some confusion about what it is. You some times find it listed as a Malva and sometimes as an Alcea. It is neither of these things;  its correct name is x Alcalthaea suffrutescens ‘Parkallee’.

This beautiful plant flowers in August and September, long after ordinary hollyhocks have finished. It is a perennial and every year the clump grows bigger and bigger and gets taller and taller. It can reach 3 metre high and has easily attained this in my garden.

The colour of the flowers is the palest peach or would you call it coffee with cream? They are semi double with a pretty ruffle in the centre and purple tipped stamens. As the flowers age they become creamier.

I read in the September issue of Gardens Illustrated that the origin of this plant is unknown. I don’t know why there is so much confusion about it. I have  seen it suggested that one of its parents could be Kitaibelia or even Hibiscus syriacus.
There is actually no mystery about its origins. It was bred in Hungary in 1953 by Prof. Zoltan Kovats and then propagated in East Germany and made available in the 1990s. He wanted to breed a hollyhock that was resistant to the awful rust: Puccinia malvacearum which usually disfigures them. He used a hollyhock: Alcea rosea as one parent and crossed it with the wild marshmallow: Althaea officinalis.. This lovely flower is becoming rare in the wild although it grows in profusion on the coast at Dunwich in Suffolk, and I showed one in a recent post.

If you look at the leaves of the marshmallow you will see that they are the same healthy, blue-green as the ones of the Alcalthaea.
I love this plant; it gets better and better with age, although it does need to be staked or it topples over. It doesn’t set seed but is very easy from cuttings.
I have recently acquired its sister plant: x Alcalthaea suffrutescens ‘Parkrondell’ which is pink.

Now I am looking for the soft pink one ‘Parkfrieden’ which doesn’t seem so readily available. There was also one called ‘Parktraum’ but it seems to have been lost. I don’t think it was ever available in this country.
If you love hollyhocks, then look out for these lovely, late flowering beauties. But allow plenty of room for them, because in a couple of years they will be taller than you. You will have long spires studded with these gorgeous satiny flowers in the most delicate colours.

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