I have always loved the flower on the Hollyhock plant going back to the days when I was a kid. This plant is in the mallow family of which there are about 60 varieties! When we moved to our house here in the Sierra Foothills, this plant appeared in our garden one year. It was a beautiful shade of pink…
Pink
We have had this particular color in our yard now for about 6 years. Maybe three years ago, a darker colored hollyhock showed up. I am not sure how we ended up with this lovely contrasting color. This one is almost black in color.
Black
This year more colors have shown up! They showed up in an area where I harvested seeds last year. Do these mutate themselves? I have no idea! None of our neighbors have this plant in their yards, so maybe they do!
Here are photos of these new volunteers showing all their lovely colors!
Pale Pink
Red
White
Burgundy
The seed pods on this plant are round buttons that have numerous flat round seeds inside. The plant does survive our snow fall in the winter, and are drought tolerant. We do not water these plants and they make it through the hot summers here just fine!
The deer: They find the leaves a tasty morsel as the summer season progresses. I noticed yesterday that the deer are already feeding on this plant. As much as they mow these down, the plants come back! I would have included a shot of the area where all of these lovely plants are, but all you see are the flower stalks! Maybe later in the season as they recover I can post a photo!
Have a great Monday! Thank you for taking the time to stop by! Be well! ^..^
Life in the Foothills 
We had billions of hollyhocks in Brigham City, Utah, when I was young. They don’t grow so well in South Texas or here in San Diego. There is a small patch of them in Balboa Park but they usually look quite scraggly.
They get that way here too as the summer heat picks up. They do hang in there though, and make it through the snow just fine. How I ended up with all the different colors is puzzling. No one in the neighborhood have these, just us…
What beautiful colors! Stunning flowers. Thanks for sharing them with us.
Thank you Marcybee!
Beautiful!
🙂
Nice, vibrant colors and a bonus that they planted themselves and are drought tolerant. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks!
Stunning colours!
Amazing aren’t they? I just wonder how I ended up with so many different colors when I started out with one! 🙂
Beautiful “Red” looks like a hibiscus flower but a look at the whole Hollyhock plant tells me it’s not even distantly related. Hollyhocks must give your garden dramatic color and texture. Is it an annual?
It can be an annual but in our area it is a perennial!
I love hollyhocks too but know very little about the plant itself. I have two on my allotment and have just planted one in the garden. I’m hoping the snails and slugs don’t like them!
I have not had an issue with either of those pesky garden eaters!
Do you save the seeds? What a variety of colours. Beautiful.
I can send you some if you would like! They are easy to grow from seed, and these plants must have come up from my spreading seeds as I harvested them last year!
That would be really nice of you. On my website, anneli-purchase.com is a contact page. If you send me a note I can email with you.
Did my thing on the contact page!
Those are gorgeous and You’re lucky to have them in your garden. We’ve got the light pink one in the Oxfordshire garden and the dark, almost black one in the Vancouver garden. I think, I might be wrong here, but I think the seeds can be dispersed by birds in their droppings. That might be one possible explanation of how they got to you. How ever they got there, I hope you enjoy them. You know, I always thought that a hollyhock is most like a woman. They bend in a gale but don’t break, get cropped down and come back, And, even if a house is built on them, eventually they find their way back up. Not much can stop them or destroy them. Love them to pieces. 🙂
Thanks Veronica! I love how you describe them like a woman!