Malvaviscus arboreus (pink)

This is the uncommon pink-flowered Turk's cap, a soft-toned form of the familiar scarlet Malvaviscus arboreus, a subtropical relative of the hibiscus in the mallow family, Malvaceae. The flowers carry the same charming quirk as the red kind: two to three inches long, they never open flat like a hibiscus but stay furled in a little turban, glowing here in clear pink rather than red.

Turk's cap is herbaceous at the cold edge of the range and a shrubby evergreen where winters stay mild. From about zone 8 the top dies back in winter and the plant returns from the root each spring; to carry a plant through a hard freeze in marginal areas, cut the tops back in late fall and mound the stubs with sand and mulch, clearing it away when warm weather returns. Heat and hot summers suit the plant perfectly.

For all the soft color, this pink form is every bit the wildlife plant the red cousin is. The furled flowers pour nectar for hummingbirds and butterflies from late spring through fall, and small, apple-like red fruits follow, mildly sweet, edible, and quickly taken by birds. The blooms come without pause through the hottest months, when many other flowers falter.

Give the pink Turk's cap rich soil and ample water in a sunny to partly shaded bed or border, and the shrub rewards with four to six feet of continuous, soft-pink bloom, a showy and unusual subject for a mild-climate garden. Few plants are so generous through summer heat, so tolerant of shade, or so beloved by hummingbirds, and the pink form brings a gentler note to a planting than the vivid scarlet.