The Marshmallow Plant

Althaea grows best in the warm nights of late-July, when the air is still scented with heat, and the sky lingers blue around the edges; when the night creaks with frogsong, and the wind calls softly, coaxing the flower up, like a star from the darkness, its petals veined like birchbark, shaped just like the wings of a moth–Althaea rising taller, and taller, a plant known since ancient times to be a relative of the moon.