Hollyhock bud in October

Can this be real? One of my hollyhocks appears to have buds!! They are first year grown from seed. How is this possible?

 

A couple of mine have grown stems from the roots of the chopped down ones from a couple of months ago and are producing flowers. Fascinating.

 

Could well be about to flower, keep your fingers crossed for no frost before they open; depends where you are in the UK.
My Creme de Cassis has flowered twice this year and another flower spike wouldn't surprise me.

 

Lots of plants are slightly out of synch due to odd weather patterns, so just enjoy them if they appear.
I have a few flowers on a geranium which notoriously doesn't have a 2nd flush of flowers, and it's never had them in all the years I've been growing it, which is about 8 or 9 years. Native rowan is flowering, while the foliage hasn't even started turning [also very odd] and so is the alpina clematis, which rarely gives me more than handful of flowers in it's 2nd flush. It's covered just now.

 

We have lots of hollyhocks flowering around here at the moment but I don't think that's particularly unusual. We get the same with other biennials like foxgloves. It just seems to happen because they self seed so readily but not always in ideal conditions, so it takes some a while to get to flowering size.