Thunbergia alata
Black-eyed Susan, winged thunbergia, black-eyed Susan vine: native to East Africa, this climber owes its name to the small dark brown-black throat at the center of each orange or golden-yellow corolla. The contrast is so striking that it looks like an eye, repeated hundreds of times across the plant for months.
Characteristics:
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Abundant flowering: funnel-shaped golden-yellow, orange, cream, or white flowers with dark brown centers, all summer long.
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Fast growth: it covers a support in one season, reaching up to 2 meters.
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Highly versatile: it can climb a support, trail from a hanging basket, or serve as ground cover.
Precautions:
- Not very hardy: it does not survive frost and is grown as an annual in our climates. However, it may bloom again the following year if overwintered in a frost-free location, and may even flower all winter in a veranda or heated greenhouse.
Sowing advice:
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Exposure: sunny to lightly partial shade, with warmth — in very hot regions, some shade during the hottest hours will prevent it from scorching.
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Soil: rich, light, moist, and well drained. This is a hungry plant that flowers better when well fed: in pots, use enriched potting soil. However, it is sensitive to drying out, which stops flowering abruptly.
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Method: no stratification required. Sow in pots under cover from March at 20–22 °C, or directly in the ground from late April onward. Soaking the seeds in lukewarm water for 12 hours speeds up germination. See how to sow your seeds.
Planting advice:
- Transplant the young plants one and a half to two months after sowing, after the last frosts. Provide a support for them to twine around at planting time: railing, fence, trellis, arbor, or pyramidal stake in a flower bed.
Care advice:
- Water regularly, especially in pots and hanging baskets, where the substrate dries out quickly: this is the key to continuous flowering.
- Remove faded flowers and pinch out young stems to make the plant bushier.
Beneficial combinations:
Benefits for biodiversity:
- The dark center of its flowers is not decorative by chance: it is a nectar guide that directs pollinators toward the center of the corolla. Bees and hoverflies flock to them all summer.
- Its dense foliage on a support provides shelter appreciated by beneficial insects.
Uses:
- Pots, hanging baskets, balconies, trellises, arbors, fences, flower beds with stakes, or ground cover. Few plants offer so many uses.
Harvesting your own seeds:
Leave a few flowers to form their small beak-shaped capsules, then harvest them as soon as they turn brown, before they burst open and scatter their seeds. See how to store your seeds.
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 reproducible, 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 sow, year after year, seeds that truly belong to them.
Add these black-eyed Susan seeds to your balcony or garden for nonstop flowering.
