Each flower has purplish-green sepals and rounded petals which are two to three centimeters long and in shades of bright yellows to reds and purples.

[2] The wallflower is a garden refugee and originally native to south-east Europe, especially in the Mediterranean basin, where it grows in the wild in rock corridors.

In Central Europe, it is now a wild and naturalized archaeophyte, which occurs mainly in warmer areas, but is only scattered for the time being.

Many cultivars have been developed, in shades of yellow, orange, red, maroon, purple, brown, white and cream.

This is partly because of its tendency to grow spindly and leggy during its second year, but more importantly its susceptibility to infections such as clubroot.

The following cultivars have gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit:-[5] Other varieties such as 'Blood Red Covent Garden' are easy to grow and often benefit from being sown and left to their own devices, growing on patches of empty land with little effort required to maintain them, providing aesthetically sound blooms which produce strong scents.