Love-lies-bleeding

Appalachian-Blue Ridge forests

Arizona Mountains forests

Atlantic coastal pine barrens

Blue Mountains forests

California coastal sage and chaparral

Canadian Aspen forests and parklands

Central Pacific Northwest coastal forests

Central Tallgrass prairie

Central-Southern Cascades Forests

A tall, bold warm-season annual from Mexico and Guatemala (the "African" name is a misnomer of its European garden history) grown for large, fully double, pompon-like flowerheads in saturated yellow, gold, and orange over strongly aromatic, finely divided foliage. Plants reach 1 to 4 feet and bloom from early summer to frost in full sun. The petals are edible and used as a culinary garnish and natural dye, and the flowers are the iconic "flor de muerto" of Mexican Day of the Dead. Despite the wide listed zone range it is frost-tender and grown for a single warm season.

What it needs

Conditions

Light

Full sun / Part shade

Water

Moderate water

Spacing

8-18"

Habit

Upright, branching warm-season annual with long, drooping tassel-like flower panicles

Care tips

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Wait until after the last frost to sow or plant out - love-lies-bleeding is frost-tender and grown for one warm season in every zone.

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Give it full sun and well-drained soil, and stake plants in open ground so the heavy tassels do not pull them over.

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Cut the tassels at their peak for fresh or dried arrangements; they keep their color when dried.

Lifecycle

Planting

Grow in average, moist, well-drained soil in full sun to part shade; flowering is best in full sun, and some afternoon shade is welcome in hot summer climates (Missouri Botanical Garden). It is frost-tender, so sow seed outdoors in late spring where the plants are to grow once the soil is warm (Plants For A Future), or set out transplants after the last frost date. Space smaller selections 8 to 12 inches apart and larger ones up to 18 inches apart (Missouri Botanical Garden). If you plan to eat the leaves or seed, skip chemical fertilizers: Plants For A Future warns that plants on nitrogen-rich soil concentrate nitrates in their leaves.

Transplanting

For earlier bloom, start seed indoors 6-8 weeks before the last frost date or buy starter plants, and set them out after the last frost; grown from seed, the flowers usually appear about three months after sowing (Missouri Botanical Garden). Germination is usually rapid and good in warm soil, and a drop in temperature overnight helps it along (Plants For A Future).

Early growth

Keep the soil moist while seedlings establish: reasonable moisture matters for germination and again at pollination, but established plants are drought tolerant (Plants For A Future, NC State Extension). Tall plants in open ground may need staking or other support (Missouri Botanical Garden). Watch for aphids, and avoid poorly drained spots, where root rot can set in.

Maturity

Plants reach about 3 to 5 feet (NC State Extension), or 2 to 4 feet in the St. Louis area (Missouri Botanical Garden), and some varieties can grow as tall as 8.2 feet (Wikipedia). The tassels hang from July until frost, typically to 12 inches long, and keep their color when cut and dried. Viruses, aster yellows and fungal leaf spot can also appear (Missouri Botanical Garden). The first frost ends the season.

Propagation

Grown from seed each year. Plants For A Future lists it as self-fertile and wind-pollinated, with separate male and female flowers on the same plant, and gives the seeds as ripening from August to September. Seed may be harvested from garden plants for sowing the following year (Missouri Botanical Garden). Grain growers usually harvest the heads just before full maturity, because otherwise some seed is lost during harvesting (Plants For A Future).

Similar plants

Browse lateral options with similar roles, light needs, size, or native-range overlap; these are not filtered for a better climate fit.

Tagetes erecta

African marigold

Annual

A bold, clump-forming evergreen perennial from South Africa, grown for big rounded umbels of trumpet-shaped blue (or white) flowers held on tall bare stalks above arching, strap-shaped leaves in mid-to-late summer. It is widely sold as "lily of the Nile," but that is a misnomer - the plant is South African (the Cape provinces and KwaZulu-Natal), not from the Nile. Spectacular and easy in warm climates, this evergreen Agapanthus is frost-tender, so in cold-winter areas it is grown in a container and overwintered under cover. The RHS has given several Agapanthus praecox forms its Award of Garden Merit and rates this evergreen species half-hardy (H3 - needs winter protection).

Hylotelephium 'Herbstfreude'

Autumn-joy stonecrop

A clump-forming herbaceous perennial grown for its showy late-season flower heads: masses of tiny star-like flowers borne in flattened cymes 3 to 6 inches across that emerge rosy pink, deepen to rose-red, and fade to coppery-rust as they die. Gray-green, fleshy, succulent-like leaves form upright clumps to about 24 inches. Easily grown in dry-to-medium, well-drained soil in full sun, it is drought tolerant and attracts butterflies, and its foliage and dead inflorescences persist into winter for added interest.

Scadoxus multiflorus, the blood lily (also fireball lily, ball lily, powderpuff lily), is a summer-growing bulbous geophyte in the Amaryllidaceae, native across tropical and southern Africa to the southwestern Arabian Peninsula. Each bulb sends up a leafless stem topped by a dramatic globe-shaped umbel of scarlet flowers with protruding stamens, often before or alongside the foliage. It is a focal-point container and bedding bulb prized for its bold flower head, but it is decidedly tender - RHS rates it H1B (minimum 50 to 59°F), so outside roughly USDA zones 9b–11 it must be grown under glass or as a houseplant and dried off / overwintered frost-free. CRITICAL CAUTION: every part is toxic - Scadoxus contains poisonous alkaloids and has been used as a component of arrow and fishing poisons; the bulbs are ornamental, not edible, and the plant is harmful to people, pets, and grazing animals if ingested. Handle with gloves and keep away from children and animals.

A bold, clumping rhizomatous perennial grown for its elegant, pure-white funnel-shaped flowers - actually a curved spathe wrapped around a yellow finger-like spadix - held on tall stems above large, glossy, arrow-shaped deep-green leaves from late winter into summer. Native to the wetlands and seeps of southern Africa, Zantedeschia aethiopica is the classic florist's calla and a striking water-margin and container plant, thriving in consistently moist to wet rich soil in full sun to part shade. It is tender (hardy in zones 8a-10b), where it overwinters in the ground and can be near-evergreen; colder gardeners grow it from lifted rhizomes or under heavy mulch. Two cautions are load-bearing: every part is toxic if eaten (calcium-oxalate raphides), and in mild, wet climates it can escape and naturalize into an invasive weed.

Zantedeschia aethiopica

Calla lily

A tuberous-rooted member of the aster family native to Mexico and Central America, grown for showy summer-to-fall blooms in nearly every color except blue. Hybrids in commerce span ten flower-form groups (single, anemone, collarette, waterlily, decorative, fall, pompon, cactus, semi-cactus, and miscellaneous) and range from 1 to 6 feet tall. Winter-hardy only to USDA Zones 7-10; in colder regions the tubers are lifted in fall and stored frost-free, so most North American gardeners grow it as a summer annual.