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Harmless🍽️ Edible💊 Medicinal

🌸 Common mallow

Malva sylvestris · Malvaceae

🌳 Temperate Europe🫒 Mediterranean
🧠 To remember it“Mallow: the little cheese growing by the roadside” — its tiny wheel-shaped fruit is child's play to spot and identify.
Common mallow — Malva sylvestris

🔍 Identify it without mistakes

Plant with rounded, palmate leaves, having 5-7 shallow lobes and a scalloped margin, borne on long petioles. Pink to purple flowers with darker stripes and 5 heart-shaped notched petals. Distinctive fruit shaped like a small flat disc composed of several tight carpels, popularly nicknamed 'little cheese' in the countryside.

  1. rounded, palmate leaves with 5-7 shallow lobes
  2. pinkish-purple flowers striped with darker veins
  3. flat, segmented disc-shaped fruit ('little cheese')
  4. entire plant mucilaginous (slimy texture) when chewed or infused
  5. upright to spreading habit depending on density, 30-120 cm
Size30-120 cm
FloweringMay-October
Habitatwastelands, roadsides, rubble, gardens, vacant lots, rich soils

⚠️ Not to be confused with

aucune confusion dangereuse répertoriée (-)aucun

To tell them apart: palmate leaves and segmented disc fruit are distinctive among common wasteland plants

🍽️ Eating it

Partsyoung leaves, flowers, immature fruits ('little cheeses')
Seasonmay-october
Tastemild, slightly mucilaginous, very neutral

Preparation : young leaves eaten raw in salads or cooked in soups (they thicken broth slightly thanks to the mucilage, much like okra); raw flowers as a garnish; young green fruits snacked on as is, soft and slightly mucilaginous texture

46kcalEnergy
3.5gProtein
0.5gFat
6.9gCarbs
55mgVitamin C

approx, raw leaves, ethnobotanical compilations (mallow closely related to the widely documented genus Malva in the Mediterranean)

💊 Healing with it

traditionally used as an emollient and demulcent for throat irritation, dry coughs, and mild digestive inflammation, thanks to its mucilage

Level of evidence : tradition (recognized by the EMA/HMPC for traditional use) — EMA/HMPC, community monograph on Malvae sylvestris folium/flos

⚠️ no major known contraindications; mucilage can slow down the absorption of other medications taken at the same time, space out doses as a precaution

🪓 Other bushcraft uses

  • flowers used for gentle textile dyeing
  • considered an indicator of rich, disturbed soil in urban wastelands
Sources (3)

No entry replaces a certain identification in the field, or medical advice. When in doubt: don't eat it. If ingestion is suspected: poison control or 112/911.