The common names leave nothing to interpretation. Cigar flower, firecracker plant — Cuphea ignea, from the Latin for fire, native to southeast and southwest Mexico, really does produce tubular reddish-orange blooms that end in a ring of black with a white tip, the whole thing looking convincingly combustible in a dense planting. The flowers come from late spring through fall on a bushy, densely branched plant growing 18 to 30 inches tall and equally wide, with small dark green lance-shaped leaves that set off the flowers without competing with them. Hummingbirds are regular visitors; butterflies and bees follow.

In tropical zones 10 to 12 it behaves as a perennial sub-shrub; everywhere else it is grown as an annual, which is no hardship given how quickly it establishes and how continuously it blooms. It performs best in full sun to part shade with moist, well-drained soil on the loamy or sandy side, and it is at home in humid heat. Pinching stem tips keeps the plant from going leggy, and it overwinters happily indoors in a sunny spot, treating the cooler months as an opportunity to consolidate before the next season.