Zinnia

Where it grows

Wild Zinnia elegans grows in the open scrub of the Mexican Bajio. Aztec gardeners had selected larger flowered forms before Spanish contact, but it was eighteenth-century European breeders, beginning in Madrid and later in Erfurt, who developed the doubled cultivars that came to dominate garden seed lists.

How to recognise it

Stiff, branching annuals thirty to ninety centimetres tall with rough, oval, opposite leaves clasping square-edged stems. Single composite flowers sit at the tip of each long stem, the ray florets arranged in one or several layers around a green or yellow disc. Modern cultivars include cactus, scabious, and pompon forms.

Garden & cultural uses

Zinnias are the classic cottage-garden cut flower because the stems toughen as the bloom matures, vase life regularly exceeds a week, and cutting prompts more flowers. They are also magnets for swallowtail butterflies and migrating monarchs. Heat and drought suit them; cool wet summers invite mildew.

In space

A zinnia became the first flower bloomed and photographed entirely in space, opening on the International Space Station in January 2016 in NASA’s Veggie growth chamber.