The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Zinnia elegans
Also called Youth And Age, Youth And Old Age, Common Zinnia, Young's Helleborine, Garden Zinnia, Zinnia, Elegant Or Garden Zinnia
Elegant zinnia (Zinnia elegans) is a fast-growing annual with bright, daisy-like flowers, grown in gardens worldwide with hundreds of cultivars. It needs full sun and warmth, and it is a sun-loving, drought-tolerant bedding plant rather than a houseplant.
Zinnia elegans (syn. Zinnia violacea) known as youth-and-age, common zinnia or elegant zinnia, is an annual flowering plant in the family Asteraceae. It is native to Mexico but grown as an ornamental in many places and naturalised in several places, including scattered locations in South and Central America, the West Indies, the United States, Australia, and Italy.
The garden zinnia was bred via hybridisation from the wild form. Zinnias are popular garden plants with hundreds of cultivars in many flower colours, sizes and forms. There are giant forms with flower heads up to 15 cm (6 in) in diameter.
Flower colours range from white and cream to pinks, reds, and purples, to green, yellow, apricot, orange, salmon, and bronze. Some are striped, speckled or bicoloured. There are "pom-pom" forms that resemble dahlias. Sizes range from dwarf varieties of less than 15 cm (6 in) in height to 90 cm (3 ft) tall. The powdery mildew common to zinnias in humid climates is less common in recently developed varieties, which are resistant.
Desert zinnia · Narrowleaf zinnia · Mexican Zinnia · Peruvian zinnia · Zinnias
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Zinnia elegans 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.
