Let’s start here. This is a single seed. It looks like a little shell, or a fossil. Look closely and you’ll see a wee notch which makes it look almost as if it has a mouth, or a beak. Where did this come from? 
It came from here. When you peel back the covers of this seed head, the little seeds spill out very easily.
Look carefully at the middle. Can you see that ring of little hooks? Well each hook holds a single seed – right where that little notch was that we saw in the previous photo. Isn’t that incredible? How delicate, and how exact!
Would you like to see what it looks like before all the seeds spill out?
There you are. Wow! It’s like a bracelet, or a necklace. Densely packed seeds just bursting with life. What will they be when they grow up?
A flower as big as a house!
These hollyhocks, or “rose trémière” as they are called around here (I think I prefer the sound of the French name) are everywhere in this part of the world. And look how high they grow! They are really stunning.
We’ve gathered a few of the seeds this week and we’ll see if we can have even more flowers next year.
Could you have imagined such a tall, beautiful flower could grow from one of these tiny seeds?
Heroes Not Zombies 
Hollyhocks and other Mallow family plants are used medicinally as an herb (roots specifically but whole plant could be used in a pinch) as a tea to soak legs/feet and reverse gangrene, which is good for diabetics to know, right? The soak needs to be nightly along with diet modifications of course!