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Nigella damascena
Also called Devil in the bush, Damascus Hellebore, Jack In The Green, Wild Fennel
Love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena) is a hardy annual with ferny foliage and blue, white or pink flowers held in a ring of lacy bracts, grown widely in cottage gardens. It is easy to grow from seed sown where it is to flower, in a sunny, open spot.
Nigella damascena, love-in-a-mist, or devil in the bush, is an annual garden flowering plant, belonging to the buttercup family Ranunculaceae.
It is native to southern Europe (but adventive in more northern countries of Europe), north Africa and southwest Asia, where it is found on neglected, damp patches of land.
This easily grown plant has been a familiar subject in English cottage gardens since Elizabethan times, admired for its ferny foliage, spiky flowers and bulbous seed-heads. It is now widely cultivated throughout the temperate world, and numerous cultivars have been developed for garden use. 'Persian Jewels' is a mixture of white, pink, lavender and blue flowers. 'Persian Rose' is pale pink. Other cultivars are 'Albion', 'Blue Midget', 'Cambridge Blue', 'Mulberry Rose', and 'Oxford Blue'. 'Dwarf Moody Blue' is around 15 cm (6 in) high. The pale blue ‘Miss Jekyll’ and the double white-flowered 'Miss Jekyll Alba' have gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.
Damascenine is a toxic alkaloid found in Nigella damascena seed.
However, an in vivo study in mice (100 ppm i.p.) and in vitro assessment on human cell lines has not shown any toxicity.
Wild fennel-flower · Spanish fennel · Black cumin · Devil-in-a-bush
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Nigella damascena 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.
