Cineraria: Cool Crop for the Cool Season

Cineraria are a very colorful greenhouse plant for the winter season. Powell Gardens regularly uses these flowers in its winter and spring displays.


Donna Covell, Horticulturist - Production is all smiles regarding the crop of cineraria. Well, not exactly, they are a very tricky crop to produce in our greenhouses! We grow 3,000 from seed that were started 25 weeks ago. We also grow 1,200 from plugs. Planting depth is very crucial when transplanting the seedlings or plugs. The temperature is critical for them to initiate flower buds: night temperatures must be between 45-55F or we will just have foliage plants.


Donna inspects the plants on a daily basis. Thrips (a bug) are always a concern because they can mire the brightly colored flowers with colorless stripes.


Penny Hudson - Greenhouse Gardener - routinely waters this crop. Cinerarias are very fussy about watering! They must be allowed to dry out between waterings but no water can be allowed on their foliage or they readily get mildew. The plants must be checked every day (sometimes twice a day on warm sunny days). They must be individually watered with a watering wand.


Deep blues are classic cineraria and probably the most widely loved. Cineraria are obviously relatives of daisies in the Aster family.


Enjoy the following colors of this 'Jester Mix.'

People always coment on our displays of cineraria. They are often disappointed to hear they are cool season annuals. To me, their ephemeral nature is what makes them so special! Come see all our cinerarias on display in the conservatory.

Yubi our greenhouse cat watches over the greenhouses and keeps them mouse-free. She was being playful during this photo session of the cineraria and is an important part of the Greenhouse crew. (We have had mice do thousands of dollars in damage to seedlings when we didn't have a greenhouse cat!)

All photos taken on February 18 in the Powell Gardens Greenhouses by Alan Branhagen.