A simply astonishing flower! Amazing deepest midnight black flowers with the most incredible glossy petals. Very little practical use as a cut flower, it has a vase life of about half an hour if you're lucky and even with searing the stems. But that half hour... just one stem in a fine single stem vase, exquisite.

A fleeting ephemeral annual, it's very easy to grow, either in modules or simply sprinkled about. They'll find a home, flower and then disappear to pop up somewhere else next year. Ours live in the polytunnel and grow to about 70cm, we'll sow it outside next year and see how it gets on.

Occasionally they produce a very deep burgundy flowered plants. Handsome but we weed these out immediately, so this seed should produce mostly black flowers.

Sow some on arrival, or early Spring in good gritty seed compost

Modules or direct sown

70cm+ Full sun or polytunnel

At least 100 seeds