I can't detect any other smell than pine resin on my mosses, Capitaine John Ingram, Henri Martin, Nuits de Young, Alfred de Dalmas, Salet and Eugenie Guinoisseau. Either my nose can't separate the different scents or I've been unlucky in my varieties.

You're welcome. Actually, Phoebe, the warmer and more arid the climate, the healthier the mosses are likely to be. Fungal issues are more prevalent in humidity. If you get really HOT, you usually won't have black spot and rust as it actually can get too hot for them to germinate and if it's very arid when the temps are right, they still may not germinate. As for handling the plants, no ma'am, soft or hard makes very little difference because it's the "prickles" on the sepals and peduncles that vary, not those on the stems and canes. There, you won't see tremendous difference between. If you want to handle the mossy buds and peduncles to enjoy their scent, you might prefer a softer moss to a harder one. I honestly haven't either observed or read of either type being less susceptible to mildew on the prickles than the other. I have read the theory that it is as prevalent as it is because of the density of the prickles providing places for spores to become trapped, permitting them to germinate instead of falling or washing off. I would imagine the moss you encountered was stunted because of the lack of light. It might actually not even been a moss rose. At their bases, you really can't tell if it's "mossed" or not. That is a characteristic of the peduncles and sepals more than any other plant part. The "mossing factor" which causes expression of the mossing can affect other parts of the plant, but not usually the cane bases. Since you live where it gets hot and dry, I would suggest you research the newer, easily reblooming moss hybrids first as they are more likely to let you enjoy their flowers in your climate. Once flowering plants can often have their bloom interrupted or even halted by extreme, sudden heat. I had that problem here in my old garden in the mid desert. Just about the time the plant was loaded with flower and ready to explode, someone flipped the switch and it got HOT over night. Every bud either exploded into a spent flower or fried on the bush in a matter of a day or two, leaving me with a prickly, green "juniper" until the following year when similar things happened. There are fragrant, beautiful more modern, repeat flowering mosses as well as a few older, repeat flowering ones, so you do have a lot from which to choose. Kim

I have had cosmos self-seed (one of the tall pink and white mixes) and Portulaca (AKA moss rose), whatever the common double mix that my local greenhouse carries. Sorry not to be more helpful with varieties. Most of the others I haven't grown, so I don't know about, but snapdragon Black Prince and calendula never self-seeded for me. A few other annuals I have had self-seed: - Johnny jump-ups, a type of viola - Nicotiana (AKA flowering tobacco) I like for its lovely evening scent (sort of vanilla-y) and its long bloom from mid-July until a good frost, so that it is the most prolific bloomer in my garden during the late fall. I planted it once about 10 years ago . . . - Verbena bonariensis has light airy purple flowers beginning in August here. - Petunias (occasionally) - Alyssum All of these pull easily if they volunteer where not wanted and will return for many years in this zone. Cleome, on the other hand, was a bit of a pest and took several years to eliminate after I had let it go to seed one year.

It doesn’t. Just blooms once. And lol! Something went terribly wrong with one of my sentences up there. “Every bud and stems below the buds have little fuzzy hairs on them” is the way it’s supposed to read.