This plant is a firm favourite in South African gardens for its colourful flower display coupled with its ability to attract nectar feeding sunbirds by the dozen. It also flowers for many months of the year providing a long and rewarding display.

The wild dagga is fast growing and is both drought and frost hardy. It should be well watered in summer and can tolerate being dried out during the dry winter months.

Plants should be cut right back (approx. 100-200 mm high) at the end of winter, top-dressed with well-rotted manure or compost and given a deep watering to stimulate the new summer seasons growth.

The narrowly lanceolate 50-100 mm green leaves are rough on the upper leaf surface and velvety on the lower leaf surface and have toothed margins. These leaves are highly aromatic when crushed and have a strong herby scent.

The Bush Bronze butterfly (Cacyreus lingeus Fam: Lycenidae) uses this plant as one of its larval food plants.

The stems are topped with multiple ball-shaped inflorescences which bear the nectar-rich bright orange flowers which protrude from the spikey calyx which protects the buds and later the seeds.

The flower heads are in axillary verticils and borne in clusters of 3-11 with various shades of orange to brilliant orange-red flowers. Individual flowers are tassel-like and consist of a long slender tube with four stamens, with an hirsute (having stiff hairs that are rough when touched) upper lip long and hooded and the lower lip short, smooth and reflexed.

The flowers contain sweet nectar that attract many nectivorous birds such as sunbirds which include the Whitebellied, Black, Yellowbellied, Olive, Collared and Marico Sunbirds. The curved beaks of these African birds which are used for feeding from these tubular flowers have been a contributing factor to the brilliant orange-red colour and tubular shape of these flowers due to co-evolution.