Nigella hispanica “Papillosa”
Spanish love-in-a-mist, papillosa love-in-a-mist, Spanish Venus’s hair: even more spectacular than its cousin, Damascus love-in-a-mist, it produces large deep-blue flowers whose prominent black stamens form an almost graphic crown at the heart of the corolla. Then comes a second spectacle: its swollen lantern-shaped fruits, which are a favorite for dried bouquets.
Characteristics:
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Striking flowers: intense blue to violet, with highly visible black stamens, from June to August.
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Naked flower, without a collar: unlike Damascus love-in-a-mist, whose flower is surrounded by a collar of fine bracts, Spanish love-in-a-mist does without one. The corolla stands alone at the end of its stem, which is precisely what makes its crown of black stamens so clearly visible.
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Decorative fruits: swollen lantern-like capsules topped with long horns, just as ornamental as the flowers.
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Airy foliage: finely divided into very narrow strips, it forms a light cloud beneath the flowers. Up to 60 cm tall.
Sowing advice:
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Position: full sun.
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Soil: light, well-drained, preferably alkaline and not too rich. Like many Mediterranean plants, it performs best in poor soil and dislikes stagnant moisture. No fertilization needed.
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Method: no stratification required. Sow from March in pots, or directly in the ground from April onward, barely covering the seeds with a few millimeters of soil: light aids germination. Ideal temperature: 15–20 °C. As its root system does not tolerate transplanting well, direct sowing in place is preferable. See how to sow seeds.
Care advice:
- Almost none. Stagger sowings every three weeks to extend flowering, and leave a few capsules to develop for dried bouquets.
Harvesting advice:
- For dried bouquets, cut the stems when the capsules are fully swollen and beginning to change color, before they open, then dry them upside down.
Beneficial combinations:
Benefits for biodiversity:
- Its wide-open flowers and accessible pollen attract bees and bumblebees, which remain active around them all summer.
- Its seeds, left standing, feed small seed-eating birds in autumn.
Uses:
- Flower beds, borders, wild gardens, and wildflower meadows. Highly prized both in fresh bouquets and as dried flowers, thanks to its ornamental capsules.
Symbolism:
Like all love-in-a-mist varieties, it is associated with freedom, delicacy, and unrequited love, because of its brief flowering period and the graphic strangeness of its flowers.
Harvesting your own seeds:
Leave a few capsules to turn brown and dry completely on the plant until they open at the top, then turn them upside down over a container. Love-in-a-mist also readily self-seeds from one year to the next. See how to store your seeds.
Our Commitment to Quality: at SemiSauvage - Permaculture, we grow and select our seeds with respect for all living things as our guiding principle. Based near the Auvergne Volcanoes, we choose open-pollinated, non-hybrid varieties, test them for germination rates, and carefully sort and package them without any chemical treatment. Our conviction: to give gardeners back the ability to resow, year after year, seeds that truly belong to them.
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