Modern Suppliers of Hollyhock - The Winner Is...

The winner for modern hollyhock selections is Swallowtail Garden Seeds with 32 varieties of hollyhock seeds,  if you count (and I do) hybrids and species besides Alcea rosea.

Swallowtail Garden Seeds include  Alcea rosea, A. ficifolia, A. rugosa, and A. pallida in the hollyhock section.  There are some beauties!!

From Swallowtail Gardens Seeds is this, Mars Magic >

BTW - Is Photoshop used here?  Something is odd.  I like the form.

There may be a larger selection somewhere but I did not find it.  I have never ordered from them as I just found their marvelous selection.

But Park Seeds has 14 varieties, with some really good ones!

It is all a matter of taste after all.  

< This is their Halo Apricot Hollyhock Seeds.

The Shop at Monticello gets high marks for the information they supply with their seeds however. This black hollyhock had the following description.  

             

"Black Hollyhock was described as early as 1629 by John Parkinson, as being "of a darke red like black blood," an apt description for the large single flowers that grace this plant in June and July. The Boston nurseryman, John B. Russe, offered seeds of "Black antwerp hollyhock: Althea nigra" in a forty-two-page catalogue published in 1827."

The Seedsman  does well, too, although for me there are too many doubles.