Indian Mallow

This Indian Mallow is too sensitive to grow outdoors in Britain; one is more likely to find it in glasshouses and orangeries. In India, however, to where it is native and the climate more congenial, it is common. In the Journal of Ethnopharmacology (2011) Pandikumar et al noted that in India’s Theni District, young women dry and powder the plant and eat a spoonful daily mixed with honey in order to assure pregnancy. Doubtless, there are many thousands of folk traditions around the world which have claimed to assist young women and men to procreate. Yet new life is a gift. Gifts sometimes go to the underserving, and the better qualified are often passed by, regardless of their mallow consumption. Why some die young, and others not, I do not know. Why some couples are chosen to reproduce and others not, I cannot fathom. Yet our faith in a wise and providential God should always be greater than our pain, greater than our sense of loss and greater than our trust in the Indian mallow.