It's true - I associate hollyhocks ever so much with Santa Fe and summer. But these ones are growing just around the corner from us on Effingham Place, and make me think - I should plant some here this summer. We encountered them - or, given their vibrancy, perhaps it's more true to say that they encountered us - on our early morning walk.
And that had me thinking - hollyhock? Holy hock? What's their name's origin? (for they are a type of malva. We hope that one side-benefit of being here this summer will be seeing our malva-bush bloom, because we've missed it ever since we planted it). Says the OED : "< holy adj. + hock n.1 mallow: evidently of hagiological origin; compare the Welsh name hocys bendigaid, which appears to translate a medieval Latin *malva benedicta. Another name was caulis Sancti Cuthberti, ‘Seynt Cutberts-cole’: see Alphita 61 s.v. Euiscus, 110 s.v. Malua. The guess that ‘the hollyhock was doubtless so called from being brought from the Holy Land’ has been offered in ignorance of the history of the word." OK, so it's a Blessed Malva. Somehow that's predictable - though still very beautiful. I've always loved them.
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