Scabiosa

Sun loving perennials for any fertile soil with a reputation to be short lived on acidic soils. All are long flowering, young plants often the most prolific. Make lovely cut flowers. Try mixing the larger flowered blue S. caucasica with the smaller cool yellow S. ochroleuca.

All scabiouses of this and related genera are among the most attractive plants to bumblebees, honeybees, solitary bees and hoverflies, as well as a range of midsummer butterflies, including skippers and browns among the showier small tortoiseshells and red admirals.