Alcea the official seal ("mon") of the Tokugawa shogunate in Japan, and through this influence has maintained importance in modern Japanese culture. For example, it inspired the name and symbol of Mito HollyHock, a professional soccer club in a city formerly led by the Tokugawa family. The Aoi Matsuri (Hollyhock Festival) is one of the three main festivals of the city of Kyoto. During the Victorian era, the hollyhock symbolized both ambition and fecundity in the language of flowers. Alcea Alcea is a genus of about 60 species of flowering plants in the mallow family Malvaceae, commonly known as the hollyhocks.
Acis rosea (flower stalks) are short, 1–5 mm long. There are two spathes. "Acis rosea" was first described in 1804 by F. Martin, as "Leucojum roseum". In 1829, Robert Sweet transferred it to "Acis". However, "Acis" was not accepted by most botanists, who continued to use a broadly circumscribed "Leucojum". "Acis" was reinstated in 2004, after it was determined on morphological and molecular grounds that the broadly defined genus "Leucojum" was paraphyletic. "Acis rosea" is native to the two western Mediterranean islands of Corsica and Sardinia. It is found in rocky ground, dry pastures and sandy places. "Acis rosea" is cultivated as