From our perspective as Hollyhock plants, we are majestic sentinels of the cottage garden, reaching for the sun with our tall spires of vibrant blooms. However, this very stature and the succulent nature of our leaves and flower buds make us a prime target for a variety of pests. When these invaders arrive, they disrupt our vital processes, stunting our growth and marring our beauty. We will detail the most common assailants from our point of view.
The first sign of an aphid infestation is often a subtle one we feel before you see. A slight stickiness, a honeydew, begins to coat our upper leaves and the tender stems just below our flower buds. This is the waste product of countless tiny, soft-bodied insects—aphids—clustering on our undersides. Their feeding is a constant, draining irritation. They pierce our vascular tissues with their needle-like mouthparts and suck out the phloem sap, which is rich in sugars we have worked so hard to produce through photosynthesis. This direct theft weakens us, causing our leaves to curl and distort, acting as protective shelters for the aphids. The honeydew they excrete then attracts sooty mold, a black fungus that further blocks sunlight from our leaf surfaces, reducing our ability to feed ourselves. An unchecked colony can leave us stunted, with malformed flowers, and utterly drained of energy.
If aphids are a covert draining operation, Japanese beetles are a brutal, overt assault. We dread the sight of their metallic green and copper bodies glinting in the summer sun. They do not suck; they chew. They land on our broad, beautiful leaves and consume the soft tissue between the tough veins. This "skeletonizing" effect leaves our leaves looking like lace—a fragile, brownish remnant that can no longer perform photosynthesis. The damage is rapid and devastating. A single beetle is a nuisance, but they release aggregation pheromones, calling in a horde that can defoliate us from the top down in a matter of days. This not only robs us of our food-making capacity but also exposes our stems and developing seed pods to harsh sunlight. The stress is immense, and while we may survive, our ability to produce a strong display of flowers and viable seeds for the next generation is severely compromised.
Spider mites are perhaps the most insidious of our common foes. They are nearly invisible to the unaided eye, thriving in hot, dry conditions. Their attack begins subtly. We first notice a faint stippling of tiny yellow dots on our leaves—each one a puncture wound where a mite has fed on individual plant cells. As the infestation grows, this stippling coalesces, and our leaves take on a dull, bronzed, and sickly appearance. The most telling sign, from our perspective, is the fine, silken webbing they spin on our undersides and between leaf stems. This webbing is a testament to their vast numbers. Like aphids, they suck our contents, but they target the chlorophyll-rich cells directly, leading to rapid desiccation. Leaves yellow, crisp up, and drop prematurely. A severe spider mite infestation feels like a relentless, invisible drought from within, sapping our moisture and life force until we are left weak and barren.
