200 Seeds of Spanish Nigella (Nigella hispanica papillosa)

Nigella hispanica “Papillosa”

Spanish nigella, papillosa nigella, Spanish Venus’s hair: even more spectacular than its cousin, love-in-a-mist, it bears 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 delight in dried bouquets.

Characteristics:

• Striking flowers: intense blue to violet, with highly visible black stamens, from June to August.
• Decorative fruits: swollen lantern-like capsules, as ornamental as the flowers.
• Airy foliage: finely divided, it surrounds the flower with a wispy ruff. Up to 60 cm tall.

Sowing advice:

• Exposure: full sun.
• 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 required.
• Method: no stratification necessary. Sow in pots from March, 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 your seeds.

Care advice:

• Almost none. Stagger sowings every three weeks to extend flowering, and leave a few capsules to form 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:

• It pairs wonderfully with cosmos, cornflower, or wild poppy in a flowering meadow. See our seeds for poor, dry soil.

Benefits for biodiversity:

• Its wide-open flowers and accessible pollen attract bees and bumblebees, which remain active around them throughout the summer.
• Its seeds, left standing, feed small seed-eating birds in autumn.

Uses:

• Beds, borders, wild gardens, and flowering meadows. Highly valued in both fresh and dried bouquets for its ornamental capsules.

Symbolism:
Like all nigellas, it is associated with freedom, delicacy, and unrequited love, because of its brief flowering period and the complexity of its flowers enclosed in their ruff.

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. Nigella 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 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 belief: to give gardeners back the ability to resow, year after year, seeds that truly belong to them.

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