The crown is 25 to 45 (rarely to 70) millimeters long and in different colors (red, pink, orange, yellow, white).

The "maw" of the crown is closed by protuberance of the lower lip, one speaks here of "masked", and everted baggy at the bottom.

The plants are pollinated by bumblebees, who are strong enough to gently and briefly open male flowers to enter and exit them without difficulty, collecting pollen in the process.

The fruit is an ovoid capsule 10–14 mm diameter shaped like a skull,[8] containing numerous small seeds.

Four former subspecies are now considered as separate species:[11] It is native to from southern-central France, and the eastern Pyrenees to north-eastern Spain and the Balearic Islands.

[14] Though perennial, the species is often cultivated as a biennial or annual plant, particularly in colder areas where it may not survive the winter.

[9][15] The cultivars 'Floral Showers Deep Bronze'[16] and 'Montego Pink'[17] have gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.

It often escapes from cultivation, and naturalised populations occur widely in Europe north of the native range,[9] and elsewhere in temperate regions of the world.

[1] Studies in A. majus have also been used to suggest that, at high temperatures, DNA methylation is not vital in suppressing the Tam3 transposon.

The benefit that A. majus brought was through an identification of a mutation at the MIXTA locus that prevented this conical petal shape from forming.

This allowed testing of the pollination plants with and without conical petals as well as comparisons of the absorption of light between these two groups.

[22] Another role A. majus played in examining the relationship between pollinator and plant were in the studies of floral scents.