Plantae > Tracheophyta > Magnoliopsida > Malvales > Malvaceae > Althaea > Althaea officinalis

Althaea officinalis (common marsh-mallow; common marshmallow)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

Althaea officinalis (marsh-mallow, marsh mallow, or common marshmallow) is a perennial species indigenous to Europe, Western Asia, and North Africa, which is used as a medicinal plant and ornamental plant. A confection made from the root since ancient Egyptian time evolved into today's marshmallow treat.
View Wikipedia Record: Althaea officinalis

Attributes

Edible [1]  May be edible. See the Plants For A Future link below for details.
Flower Type [1]  Hermaphrodite
Lifespan [1]  Perennial
Pollinators [1]  Bees, Bats
Structure [3]  Herb
Usage [1]  The dried root is used as a toothbrush or is chewed by teething children; It has a mechanical affect on the gums whilst also helping to ease the pain. The root is also used as a cosmetic, helping to soften the skin; A fibre from the stem and roots is used in paper-making; The dried and powdered root has been used to bind the active ingredients when making pills for medicinal use; A glue can be made from the root; The root is boiled in water until a thick syrup is left in the pan, this syrup is used as a glue. An oil from the seed is used in making paints and varnishes;
Height [1]  3.936 feet (1.2 m)
Width [1]  30 inches (0.75 m)
Light Preference [2]  Mostly Sunny
Soil Acidity [2]  Neutral
Soil Fertility [2]  Mostly Infertile
Soil Moisture [2]  Damp
View Plants For A Future Record : Althaea officinalis

Protected Areas

Predators

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Ramularia keithii[6]

External References

USDA Plant Profile

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Plants For A Future licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
♦ 2ECOFACT 2a Technical Annex - Ellenberg’s indicator values for British Plants, M O Hill, J O Mountford, D B Roy & R G H Bunce (1999)
♦ 3Kattge, J. et al. (2011b) TRY - a global database of plant traits Global Change Biology 17:2905-2935
♦ 4Biological Records Centre Database of Insects and their Food Plants
♦ 5HOSTS - a Database of the World's Lepidopteran Hostplants Gaden S. Robinson, Phillip R. Ackery, Ian J. Kitching, George W. Beccaloni AND Luis M. Hernández
♦ 6Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 7Ben-Dov, Y., Miller, D.R. & Gibson, G.A.P. ScaleNet 4 November 2009
♦ 8New Zealand Institute for Plant & Food Research Plant-SyNZ™ database
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0