_Hibiscus Moscheutos_
_Flowers_--Very large, clear rose pink, sometimes white, often with
crimson centre, 4 to 7 in. across, solitary, or clustered on peduncles
at summit of stems. Calyx 5-cleft, subtended by numerous narrow
bractlets; 5 large, veined petals; stamens united into a valvular column
bearing anthers on the outside for much of its length; 1 pistil partly
enclosed in the column, and with 5 button-tipped stigmatic branches
above. _Stem_: 4 to 7 ft. tall, stout, from perennial root. _Leaves_: 3
to 7 in. long, tapering, pointed, egg-shaped, densely white, downy
beneath; lower leaves, or sometimes all, lobed at middle.
_Preferred Habitat_--Brackish marshes, riversides, lake shores, saline
situations.
_Flowering Season_--August-September.
_Distribution_--Massachusetts to the Gulf of Mexico, westward to
Louisiana; found locally in the interior, but chiefly along
Atlantic seaboard.
Stately ranks of these magnificent flowers, growing among the tall
sedges and “cat-tails” of the marshes, make the most insensate traveller
exclaim at their amazing loveliness. To reach them one must don rubber
boots and risk sudden seats in the slippery ooze; nevertheless, with
spade in hand to give one support, it is well worth while to seek them
out and dig up some roots to transplant to the garden. Here, strange to
say, without salt soil or more water than the average garden receives
from showers and hose, this handsomest of our wild flowers soon makes
itself delightfully at home under cultivation. Such good, deep earth,
well enriched and moistened, as the hollyhock thrives in, suits it
perfectly. Now we have a better opportunity to note how the bees suck
the five nectaries at the base of the petals, and collect the abundant
pollen of the newly-opened flowers, which they perforce transfer to the
five button-shaped stigmas intentionally impeding the entrance to older
blossoms. Only its cousin the hollyhock, a native of China, can vie with
the rose-mallow’s decorative splendor among the shrubbery; and the Rose
of China (_Hibiscus Rosa-Sinensis_), cultivated in greenhouses here,
eclipse it in the beauty of the individual blossom. This latter flower,
whose superb scarlet corolla stains black, is employed by the Chinese
married women, it is said, to discolor their teeth; but in the West
Indies it sinks to even greater ignominy as a dauber for blacking shoes!
Marsh Mallow (_Althaea officinalis_), a name frequently misapplied to
the Swamp Rose-mallow, is properly given to a much smaller pink flower,
measuring only an inch and a half across at the most, and a far rarer
one, being a naturalized immigrant from Europe found only in the salt
marshes from the Massachusetts coast to New York. It is also known as
Wymote. This is a bushy, leafy plant, two to four feet high, and covered
with velvety down as a protection against the clogging of its pores by
the moisture arising from its wet retreats. Plants that live in swamps
must “perspire” freely and keep their pores open. From the Marsh
Mallow’s thick roots the mucilage used in confectionery is obtained, a
soothing demulcent long esteemed in medicine.