Zinnia marylandica Zahara Starlight Rose Seeds

Zinnia marylandica Starlight Rose is exceptional. This spectacular, 2010 award-winning plant bears from July to October, large flowers measuring 6 cm in diameter, featuring white petals with pink centres, centred around a truly brilliant, golden eye. It is a dwarf variety with a compact, bushy habit and with disease-resistant foliage. Its flowers are very beautiful in fresh or dried flower bouquets. Perfectly tolerant to heat and drought, this undemanding plant requires sun and well-drained soil for best results.

Zinnia marylandica is a sterile hybrid belonging to the family Asteraceae, obtained by artificially crossbreeding Z. angustifolia var. angustifolia and Z. violacea. Both species are native to northern and western Mexico. The cultivar 'Zahara Starlight Rose' is an annual plant that forms a compact, branched mound measuring 40 cm in height and in width. The sturdy stems are covered with rough, downy, lanceolate to elliptical, medium green leaves. This variety is particularly resistant to fungal diseases. Particularly long-flowering, it bears nectar-rich, melliferous blooms from June-July to October. The flower is a large capitulum, 6 cm across, that fully opens revealing a double row of ligulate flowers, each bearing a single white petal whose centre is adorned by beautiful bright pinky-rose markings. The centre of the flower is golden.

Seeing zinnias grow is always a lovely surprise. Not only are they able to sprout up from the ground in the most unlikely places, including those disdained by many plants, they are capable of blooming even in gravelly soils and in scorching sunlight. Their vivid, almost aggressive colours blend so well with the light of the relentless summer sun and pale gravel beaches, that they should be grown right into the cracks of the terrace or the paths. Even if they live only one year, you might as well take advantage of their never-ending blooming as much as you can. They assert themselves in cottage-style flowerbeds, where their fieriness is tempered by milder blooms of plants such as white or blue love-in-a-mist, cosmos, white gauras, or by placing them between airy grasses such as Stipa tenuifolia or Eragrostis trichoides. They can also be sown in pots to decorate the terrace in summer.