With respect to Mallows, Hesiod says—
Nor do men know how great may be the goodμαλάχη is the Attic name for mallow. But I, says Atheneus, have found in many of the copies of the Minos of Antiphanes the word spelt with an o; for instance, he speaks of men—
Derived from asphodel and mallow food.
Eating the root of mallow (μολόχης).And Epicharmus has—
I am milder than the mallow (μολόχης).And Phanias says, in his book on Plants—“The seminal portions of the cultivated mallow are called 'the cheese-cake,' as being like a cheese-cake. For those pistils which are like the teeth of a comb have some resemblance to the edge of a cheese-cake; and there is a boss like centre, like that in the middle of a cheese-cake. And the whole circumference of the rim is like the sea-fish denominated the sea-urchin.” But Diphilus the Siphnian makes a statement, that the mallow is full of pleasant and wholesome juice; having a tendency to smooth the arteries, separating from them the harshnesses of the blood by bringing them to the surface. And he adds that the mallow is of great service in irritations of the kidneys and the bladder, and that it is very tolerably digestible and nutritious. And moreover, that the wild mallow is superior to that which grows in a garden. But Hermippus, the follower of Callimachus, in his treatise on the Seven Wise Men, says that mallows are put in what he calls the ἄλιμον, that is to say, the preventive against hunger, and into the ἄδιψον, that is, the preventive against thirst; and that it is a very useful ingredient in both.
