
Flower care guide
A soft ruffled disc with a domed centre studded like a pincushion. Delicate, slightly wild, and the thing that stops a formal arrangement looking stiff.
Cut the wiry stems cleanly at an angle and strip any lower foliage.
Change the water every two days. Scabiosa is not long-lived and clean water is most of what extends it.
Keep them somewhere cool. They are noticeably shorter-lived in a warm room, and direct sun finishes them quickly.
As each flower goes over, a papery seed head is left behind. Many people leave these in the arrangement deliberately; they last far longer than the flower did and give the vase a second life.
The seed heads left behind after scabiosa flowers drop are sold as a cut stem in their own right, papery spheres that last for months.