Calendula

Where it grows

The pot marigold has been grown in European herb gardens for more than two thousand years. It self-seeds enthusiastically in cool maritime climates, flowering from May through November in British and northern European borders and longer where winters are mild. It tolerates poor soil and neglect.

How to recognise it

A bushy annual twenty to sixty centimetres tall, with soft, sticky, oblong leaves and single or semi-double composite flowers four to seven centimetres across. The ray florets are deep orange or pale yellow, often with a darker disc. Seedheads curl into characteristic claw-shaped achenes.

Garden & cultural uses

Calendula petals lend their colour to butter, cheese, and rice in place of saffron, and are sprinkled as edible confetti on salads. Triterpenoid extracts of the flower are still standard in modern herbal skin creams for irritation and minor wounds. Companion planted, calendula attracts hoverflies that prey on aphids.

In etymology

The name comes from the Latin calendae, “first day of the month,” referring to a Roman observation that the flower opened to greet the calends throughout the growing year.