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Linum grandiflorum
Also called Crimson Flax, Red Flax, Scarlet Flax
Flowering flax is a showy annual herb with red flowers, grown from seed in gardens each year. Give it full sun and well-drained soil, as it is a short-lived plant that rarely returns after one season.
Linum grandiflorum is a species of flax known by several common names, including flowering flax, red flax, scarlet flax, and crimson flax. It is native to Algeria and Tunisia, but it is known elsewhere in Northern Africa, Southern Europe and in several locations in North America as an introduced species. It is an annual herb producing an erect, branching stem lined with waxy, lance-shaped leaves 1 to 2 centimeters long. The inflorescence bears flowers on pedicels several centimeters long. The flower has 5 red petals each up to 3 centimeters long and stamens tipped with anthers bearing light blue pollen. It can on occasion be found as a casual well outside its normal established range; records from the British Isles, for example, are reasonably frequent (as per the latest BSBI atlas) but, grown as an annual, it rarely persists for more than one season.
A popular garden plant, L. grandiflorum has been cultivated in a number of colours such as salmon. Some varieties are known as L. grandiflorum rubrum, L. grandiflorum var. rubrum or L. grandiflorum 'Rubrum'. Other varieties include Bright Eyes.
Tree Flax · Pale flax · Golden Flax · Lewis flax · Flax · Blue flax · Linum strictum · Flax · Flax
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Linum grandiflorum by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
