They are everywhere!

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Our Italian lodger (let’s call her Paola) asked me a while ago whether Malva plants grew here. In this country plants of the genus ‘Malva’ are known as Mallow, for example common mallow, musk mallow, and marsh mallow (originally used to make the sweet). I explained that they do grow here, but only in summer, so it was no good looking for them in February or March, but later in the summer they would start to appear. Well now they have appeared, and since I am specifically looking for them I am noticing them even more than usual. Apparently Paola’s father finds the plants when he goes walking in the mountains. He picks the leaves and swears by them as a cure-all; he eats them, makes infusions from them, uses them as a balm etc. Here the plant grows in the kind of places where not a lot else will grow; in scrubby patches, roadsides, even cracks in the pavement. And the busier the road is the more common it seems to be! Maybe traffic pollution deters other plants, or maybe its seeds just spread easily in the winds generated by passing vehicles… but whatever, there is one plant growing on the roadside bank of our little road, then there are three more that I’ve noticed on the way to the post office beside the village road, but on the main city ring road there are hundreds of them, making the whole roadside mauve! The challenge now is to find some plants that are growing in some nice clean place where you might actually want to consume the leaves! All rights reserved. © Text copyright Fleur 2026.