Malva thuringiaca

Malva thuringiaca (formerly Lavatera thuringiaca), the garden tree-mallow, is a herbaceous perennial in the family Malvaceae reaching about 1.8 m in height. The leaves are up to 9 cm long, palmately three- to five-lobed and downy with greyish hairs, while the showy pink flowers, 3–6 cm across, are borne in long axillary spikes through summer and each carries five broadly notched petals around a typical malvaceous staminal column. The species is native to eastern Europe and south-western Asia, from southern Germany south to Italy and east to southern Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkey, where it grows in dry meadows, scrub, road verges and rocky open ground. Two subspecies are distinguished by the lobing of the upper leaves: subsp. thuringiaca across most of the range, and subsp. ambigua in southern France, Italy and the western Balkans. Popular shrubby garden cultivars sold as ‘tree mallows’ are hybrids with Malva olbia (Malva × clementii).