Why Hollyhocks Are Old-Fashioned Flowers

"Old-fashioned beauty," "old-fashioned Southern favorite," "definitive old-fashioned garden plant" -- why, when someone says "hollyhocks," does "old-fashioned" precede it? These yesterday were on an island in a strip-mall parking lot: showy, heart-colored; perhaps the popular "creme de cassis" color. I want some! Blossoms the size of a face! I want to meet whoever planted them for our enjoyment. And I want to know why they're old-fashioned.

My brother-in-law just phoned and I told him "hollyhocks" and he said his grandmother mentioned hollyhocks in one of the poems she wrote.

They're originally from China, where they're called "shu kui." Google Translate says "shu" means "book" and "kui" means "God," "chief," or "serious"; Wikipedia says that in Chinese legend, Kui was the inventor of music and dancing. In 15th-century England the plant was named "holyoke." They are neither holy nor oak, but it is said, who knows if it's true, hollyhocks arrived in England from the Holy Land.

Ancient photos show the house I lived in from birth to age 7 (house built 1887; no longer standing; it's a parking lot!) had a tumbledown white-painted arched wooden trellis, with two seats.

Me and Aunt Anna in Sunday best. The car's four "ventiports" identify it as a Buick.

Photograph taken summer 1958 is of me and "aunt" Anna Savin (nee Weiss), a German who during the war dug ditches in Russia. The trellis held morning glories in season, and behind us, outside of the fence, on long bare stems, are hollyhocks. Alongside the house in spring grew violets and lilies of the valley, and in summer,  "four o'clocks," cradling smart black seeds; we also had peony bushes. A lilac bush and orange lilies bloomed out back. My parents planted none of these. All these flowers are still designated "old-fashioned" perennials. There were rambling roses, because I remember the scent and thorns.

Those are all old-fashioned flowers because they're English cottage-garden flowers, and there must have been a time when English was the type of flower garden for a Midwestern householder to have. In the language of flowers, hollyhocks mean "ambition" or "fecundity."

I remember as a kid crumbling between my wondering fingers the corncob-like stamens of the hollyhocks. The flowers in the parking lot in 2020 I did not touch.