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.

A Good Mum

Much smarter now than when I moved here, especially in the ways of plants, when I watered the sunny yellow potted Belgian mums I frittered away $5.99 on and chose from dozens, and the water ran right out through the bottom and the blooms drooped as if aphids had got at 'em, I said to myself, "They're root-bound, that's why."

So animated with color and life that they are great company, they attracted another friend, the green one whom you see here. The mums come indoors at night because squirrels will wantonly destroy anything they see that I treasure. I was, however, thrilled to correctly identify the problem, tickle and rip their tough strangled roots apart, and transplant to a slightly larger pot where the mums now thrive. I've always been a talented transplanter; even Demetrius, the genius gardener, agreed I had the knack. Maybe I should try heart and liver transplants. The blooms perked up, and from day one have brightened the whole scene. So glad I paid the $5.99. When September comes, one must do everything possible to stay an optimist.

"Flowers Kept Alive"

Cited as one of the most grotesque moments in English literature, Tennyson's poem "Flower in the Crannied Wall" goes like this:

Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

What's grotesque about that is he's singing its praises having torn it up by the roots and killed it: very white western patriarchal. Japanese flower arranging (ikebana, meaning "flowers kept alive") was demonstrated at the History Museum and I was fascinated by the arranger's concerns as she made the arrangement seen at the left. Ikebana cares about movement in their arrangements, thus the tall leaves that wave a little. Then she arranged the white flowers, and then said the arrangement needed depth, and thus the pink flowers. I have often arranged flowers to my satisfaction -- with good flowers one can hardly do it wrong -- but the result of this very conscious and minimalist approach mesmerized me. Right now I have purple irises in the lawn I'd love to cut and arrange, but I think the way the irises have arranged themselves cannot be improved upon.