Plant · P-126

Garden Cosmos

Cosmos bipinnatus

Garden cosmos blooms from midsummer through the first frost, filling the season that cool-season insectary flowers cannot cover, and it draws one of the broadest predator guilds around - parasitic wasps, lady beetles, lacewings, hoverflies and more, including tachinid flies and wasps that parasitize caterpillars specifically. It has no food or medicinal use; it earns its place purely as a cut flower and insect magnet. Oddly, it flowers best on poor, lean soil - rich ground just produces tall, floppy plants that need staking - and it self-sows so readily that letting it run in a rough corner costs nothing.