ALL PREORDER SPECIES ARE STILL GROWING IN OUR GREENHOUSE - Please note all orders containing preorder species will be held until all plants in your order are ready to pickup or ship. If you would like available plants sooner please make two separate orders.
Light
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Full, Partial
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Moisture
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Wet to Medium-Wet
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Bloom
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Late-Summer
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Color
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Pink
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Height
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5 FT
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Rose mallow is a large, showstopping wetland perennial with unique foliage and cup-shaped flowers that can reach six inches across. It thrives where there is consistent moisture, and can tolerate periodic flooding. It works wonderfully in rain gardens, pond margins, or naturalized wetlands, but it also grows happily in moist, fertile garden soil. It can tolerate light shade but flowers best in full sun situations.
This plant is slow to grow in the spring but grows explosively in the heat of summer as long as it has consistent access to water. Sturdy, unbranched stems form a dense, structured clump up to six feet tall and four feet wide. The leaves are arranged alternately up the stems. They are composed of a long, pointed, central lobe with two shorter, pointed, lateral lobes at its base. Due to this unique leaf shape, this species is sometimes called halberd-leaved rose mallow.
Its flowers are massive and have a distinctly tropical appearance; they are impossible to overlook when they bloom in midsummer to fall. Roughly five large petals overlap to form a white to light pink cup with a deep magenta throat from which protrudes an elegant staminal column. Each of these magnificent flowers will only open for a single day, though the plant will bloom in this fashion for about a month. The flowers are visited by hummingbirds, moths, butterflies and bees. Other insects make use of its foliage, such as beetles, bugs, and sawflies, as well as the caterpillars of the pearly wood nymph, yellow scallop moth, io moth, and delightful bird-dropping moth. The foliage is also enjoyed by deer. Waterfowl consume the seeds which form in large, dark pods that provide sustained visual interest. Although this plant has a very large root stock, it spreads via seed.
