Garden cosmos

Cosmos bipinnatus, the garden cosmos or Mexican aster, is a slender erect annual herb in the family Asteraceae native to the highlands of Mexico and Central America and widely cultivated and naturalized around the world as an ornamental and roadside flower. Plants reach 60-180 cm in height with slender, branching, weakly succulent stems clothed in sparse short hairs. Leaves are opposite and twice-pinnately compound (bipinnate) into very narrow, almost filiform, linear segments 1-2 cm long, giving the foliage a delicate feathery texture reminiscent of a fennel or dill leaf. The inflorescence consists of solitary terminal flower heads 5-10 cm across borne on long slender peduncles. Each head has 8 broad obovate ray florets in shades of pink, rose, magenta, white, or rarely lavender or pale yellow, surrounding a flat disc of bright yellow tubular florets. The involucre consists of two rows of bracts: an outer row of narrow green spreading bracts and an inner row of broader scarious-margined bracts. Flowering occurs from midsummer through autumn. Fruits are slender, dark-coloured, beaked achenes 8-12 mm long with two or three short retrorsely barbed awns that catch in fur and clothing for dispersal.