African marigold

Tagetes erecta, commonly known as the Aztec or African marigold and as cempasúchil in Mexico, is an erect annual herb in the family Asteraceae native to Mexico and Central America and cultivated worldwide as an ornamental, a source of xanthophyll pigment, and a ritual plant. The plant reaches 40 to 100 centimetres tall, with stout, glabrous, ribbed, often somewhat glaucous stems that branch in the upper third. Leaves are opposite below and alternate above, pinnately divided into nine to seventeen lanceolate, sharply serrate segments 2 to 5 centimetres long that are dotted with conspicuous, translucent, pungently aromatic oil glands. The flower heads are large for the genus, 4 to 10 centimetres across when fully open, solitary or in loose corymbs at the stem tips, with a swollen cup-shaped phyllary involucre of fused bracts. Wild and single-flowered forms have one or two rows of bright yellow to orange ray florets surrounding many disc florets; cultivated double-flowered forms have many rows of ligulate ray florets in shades from cream and lemon-yellow through deep orange to red-brown.