Anagallis monelli Blue Noon - Blue Pimpernel seeds

The Blue Noon great-flowered scarlet pimpernel, also known as Anagallis monelli Blue Noon, is an adorable small, spreading annual with gentian blue and pink flowers. The wild scarlet pimpernel of sunny rockeries wanders along the roads that cross the landscapes of the humid Western Mediterranean. This excellent variety has large flowers in summer which open in the morning and close in the afternoon, on narrow, deep shiny green foliage, rolled at the edges. This plant is very decorative in rockeries, borders, pots, and hanging baskets that it will soon cover. It likes heat and well-drained soils and tolerates drought in open ground.

Anagallis monelli Blue Noon is a frost-tender, short-lived perennial, most often grown as an annual, belonging to the primrose family. It is an improvement of Monelli's scarlet pimpernel, native to Morocco, southern Italy, and Portugal, where the climate is influenced by the ocean. This plant forms spreading clumps of 20 cm (8in) in all directions in a year, consisting of ascending or prostrate stems, woody at the base and rooting at the nodes. They are covered with small lanceolate, dark and shiny green leaves, 1.5 cm (1in) long and 5 mm (0in) wide, rolled at the edges and covered with glandular hairs. Flowering takes place from June to September. The flowers are large for the species, formed by 5 cup-shaped,  gentian blue petals contrasting with a small pink heart and a cluster of yellow stamens. They open in the morning and close in the mid-afternoon in hot weather.

The Blue Noon scarlet pimpernel is perfect in rockeries, often grown with antennarias, cerastiums, fragrant alyssums, or late spring-flowering bulbs (garlic, camassias, galtonias). At the forefront of borders, it will go well with dwarf snapdragons, Hartweg's lupins, Californian poppies, Nigellas, and many others... In hanging baskets or containers, the intense colour of the flowers and the shiny foliage will enhance the flowers of bacopas and scaevolas. You can also use it to decorate large pots, at the foot of taller perennials.