MARSH MALLOW

—A guest dispatch from the Accidental Initiate

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William Blake proposed seeing “a World in a Grain of Sand” and “a Heaven in a Wild Flower.” I have lately been finding a world in drainage ditches.

Once I began collecting wildflowers, those strips along roads I had passed without noticing became surprisingly crowded places. There was chicory, St. John’s wort, gentian, cardinal flower—and recently, a mallow. I don’t know that mine was the marsh mallow, Althaea officinalis. But the name stopped me.

Mallow. Marshmallow?

It turns out the thing we roast over a campfire really does lead back to a plant.

Althaea officinalis is the marsh mallow, a mallow of damp ground whose thick, mucilaginous root was valued medicinally for centuries. Even its botanical name remembers this. Althaea derives from Greek associated with healing; officinalis is the old botanical designation for plants of the apothecary—the medicinal storeroom or workshop.

The English name for the flower is older still. Old English had mersc-mealwe: marsh mallow. Nobody in a candy company dreamed up the word.

The candy came later. The soothing material from marsh-mallow root was sweetened, and eventually French confectioners developed it into a whipped confection. Sugar and egg whites helped turn medicine into something considerably more interesting. Later, gelatin and industrial production took over, and the marsh-mallow plant itself was no longer needed.

But the name stayed.

Which means you can walk into a supermarket today, pick up a bag marked MARSHMALLOWS, and find the name of a wild plant plainly printed on it—even though there isn’t any marsh mallow inside.

I had seen that word all my life.

I had to start looking in drainage ditches to find out what it meant.

Perhaps Blake was onto something.

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More Words In The Wild can be found : HERE