Holloak.

Botanical name: 

Malva arborea.

A common garden flower. It grows eight feet high, and the stalk is round, firm, hairy, and upright. The leaves are large and roundish, of a deep green, hairy, and cut in at the edges; the flowers are very large, red, white, or purple, and stand in a kind of long spike. The root is white, long, and thick, and is of a slimy nature, and not disagreeable taste.

This is the part used; a decoction of it operates by urine, and is good in the gravel; it has the same virtue with the mallow and marshmallow, but in a middle degree between them; more than the mallow, and not so much as the other, nor is it so pleasant.


The Family Herbal, 1812, was written by John Hill.