The urban stealth weed

The hollyhock (stokroos) is the prime weed in a large part of Utrecht. You will not find it everywhere, and my provisional hypothesis is that it has to do with soil, but where it is present it doesn't hide itself. At the local plant market you can purchase 3 saplings for a tenner and yes the Hollyhock is a decorative flower, loved by gardeners and nobody seems to mind them: they are a weed not regarded as weed. Light yellow and link pink are the prevalent colours but I have seen purple, red and almost black ones as well. They need very little space to grow: just a few centimetres between a wall and pavement is enough, and they will take over the mini-gardens (the size of the paving tile that was there first) many people without a proper garden have. But the hollyhock does grow a bit too high for its own good: to get out of the shade they grow askew but in doing so they start to take up space reserved for the heads of pedestrians: at at certain point I could not properly walk out of my own door because of them and therefore I needed to chop off a few of its tentacles. Another thing about them is that they can snap when the wind is strong enough.

You can eat them: "Hollyhock (Alcea rosea) flowers are edible (so are the leaves, root and stem) - Very bland, slightly sweet flavour, somewhat slimy."

The above picture is a good example of the hollyhocks potential and acumen. The tree has a little personal space where the mover can't come and this where the hollyhock takes root. In an afternoon I could easily find 100 other examples like this of the limited needs of the hollyhock.

I don't like them: they are hiding something, a dark secret that will kill us all.