Musk Mallow

Late summer is such a wonderful time on PEI. Warm days and comfortably cool nights, water temperatures perfect for swimming, and an abundance of fresh food from farms, gardens, and nature. One of the overlooked but tasty wild foods of August are the young seed pods from Musk Mallow (Malva moschata).

You may have noticed showy white or pink Musk Mallow flowers around Island roadsides, trails, and field edges about a month ago (inset photo). Those flowers are edible and make an attractive garnish for both sweet and savoury dishes. Mallow’s leaves, stems, and roots are high in a gooey substance called mucilage. While that doesn’t sound appetizing, it’s very useful as a thickener, much like Okra (which is also a member of the Mallow Family, Malvaceae). Chopped Mallow is a great addition to soups, stews, or smoothies. 

Musk Mallow’s mucilage is a handy addition to the medicine cabinet as well, particularly useful in relieving coughs and sore throats. All parts of the plant can be made into a soothing tea, although leaves and roots are most commonly used. You can also find your dose of Mallow commercially, in products such as Ricola cough drops. 

If you leave the flowers, they’ll develop into disc-shaped seed pods, each one with about a dozen seeds around the outer edge and hidden inside a papery covering (main photo). Called ‘cheeses’ because of their semblance to tiny cheese wheels, the unripe, green pods have a lovely pea-like taste. They’re nice on their own, served with cream cheese on crackers, added to salads, or pickled and used as a substitute for capers (I’ve included a recipe for Pickled Cheeses in my new book, Wild Foods of Prince Edward Island).

The similarity of this plant’s name to ‘marshmallow’ is no coincidence. Marsh Mallow (Althaea officinalis) is another member of the Mallow family, and its roots were originally used to make the famous campfire treat. Although gelatin has replaced Mallow mucilage as an ingredient in the candy, marshmallows’ name is a legacy of their botanical origin. 

Musk Mallow is not native to PEI but was brought here from Europe as a garden plant in the mid-1800s. It escaped cultivation and has spread across the province, but it sticks to disturbed areas and hasn’t become much of a problem. Mallow is an attractive and edible part of PEI Untamed!