This Musk mallow (Malva moschata) must be the prettiest wildflower I’ve found still in bloom so far this year.

They can usually be found in dry places, like ‘chalk pastures, roadsides, churchyards and old quarries’, according to my Flora Botanica: this one was on a roadside verge next to Grangemoor Park, a former rubbish dump now park.

Plantlife’s website has some fascinating snippets about this pretty plant. Did you know …

• The ancient Greeks used musk mallow to decorate friends’ graves.
• Musk mallow was once an ingredient in soothing cough syrups and ointments, and it was also valued as an aphrodisiac!
• In the Victorian “Language of Flowers” it is said to be a symbol of ‘consumed by love’, persuasion, and weakness.