Hibiscus coccineus 'Lone Star' is the pure white form of the scarlet rose mallow, and the change of color changes everything. Where the wild species blazes red, 'Lone Star' opens great five-pointed stars of clean, luminous white, five to seven inches across, glowing against deep green, finely cut foliage and all the more striking in the soft light of evening. The same tall, architectural native frame carries a cooler, more serene presence.
Cuban rose mallow is one of the tall, slender members of the perennial hibiscus tribe, a plant that reads as airy and upright rather than bushy. Through the summer the stems carry fairly large flowers in a soft purplish pink, the classic mallow saucer set against distinctly gray-green foliage, and the stems themselves are lightly prickly to the touch. Rising to seven or ten feet on narrow clumps, the plant lifts the bloom well up where the color can be seen from a distance.
Hibiscus dasycalyx is one of the rarest wildflowers in the country, described only in 1968, and even then from a mere handful of sites in the bottomlands of east Texas, in Houston, Trinity, and Cherokee counties, along the Neches, Angelina, and Trinity rivers. The total wild population has been estimated in the low thousands. Whole seasons of botanical fieldwork across the Southeast have turned up fewer plants than a single good nursery bed.
Hibiscus moscheutos, the rose mallow, is the hardiest of the perennial hibiscus and the tough, cold-proof parent behind most of the dinner-plate hibiscus sold today. The wild plant is a stout, clump-forming perennial of eastern marshes, rising to six or eight feet each summer and opening broad flowers to six inches and more, clean white or soft pink with a dramatic crimson eye at the center. For sheer size of bloom on a plant that shrugs off hard winters, little else compares.
Pineland hibiscus is the wilder, pricklier cousin among the native mallows, and all the more charming for a slightly untamed look. Through the summer the plant opens broad flowers several inches across in soft creamy yellow, each centered on a deep maroon eye, the classic hibiscus form scaled down and set on a low, spreading, bristly frame. The deeply lobed leaves are rough to the touch and the stems carry fine prickles, so the whole plant reads as a hardy native of open, sunny ground rather than a pampered border hybrid.
Hibiscus coccineus, the scarlet rose mallow or Texas star hibiscus, is a tall, dramatic perennial native to the wetlands and swamps of the southern United States. Rising on strong, upright stems to six or ten feet, the plant lifts great scarlet stars above the summer garden, an American native that looks every bit as exotic as any tropical hibiscus and proves far tougher.
Hibiscus grandiflorus, the swamp rose mallow, is a magnificent native perennial of the southeastern United States, grown for enormous soft-pink blooms and broad, velvety, gray-green leaves. Rising to eight or ten feet on stout stems, the plant brings a lush, almost tropical presence to the summer garden, at home in a wetland but just as striking in an ordinary bed or beside a pond.
Hibiscus palustris is the northern, cold-hardy face of the American rose-mallows, a marsh dweller whose species name comes straight from the Latin palus, a swamp or marsh. Botanists today often fold the plant into Hibiscus moscheutos as a subspecies, but the old name still travels with the pink-flowered marsh plants of the Northeast, and gardeners know exactly which plant the name marks. Where many tropical hibiscus sulk at the first frost, this perennial dies cleanly to the ground each winter and returns from a woody crown, unfazed by zone 5 cold.
