The Flower That Attracts Hummingbirds And Smells Like Dessert

A flower that smells like dessert might have more than one delightful surprise for your garden if you want to attract hummingbirds. While many gardeners focus on the color of red flowers to attract these delightful garden visitors, nectar-rich blooms with tubular shapes and long flowering times, are the real secret to building a garden that keeps them coming back. There is one plant you can grow to make your garden smell like a chocolate factory and draw in hummingbirds with the shape of its blooms: Chocolate cosmos (Cosmos atrosanguineus); a cocoa-scented flower with eye-catching velvety maroon petals.

The small, bowl-shaped flowers of the chocolate cosmos bloom from mid to late summer. Though it's not native to the U.S. but comes from Mexico, it grows from tuberous roots and has preferred USDA hardiness zones of 7 through 9. Despite its preferences, you can overwinter this hummingbird-favorited flower to enjoy it again each summer and fall, by simply lifting and storing the tubers in a cool, dry spot over winter. This will ensure these dessert-scented blooms can return each year — along with the hummingbirds they quietly help sustain.

While fragrance isn't a reliable cue for hummingbirds, chocolate cosmos stands out among other flowers for combining visual impact, seasonal longevity, and strong sensory appeal. With the right placement in full sun and moist but well-drained soil, it fits easily into borders, containers, or even small pollinator patches.

Although the deep maroon coloring of chocolate cosmos aligns with the birds' known attraction to rich reds and purples, the plant earns its place in pollinator-friendly gardens thanks to its shape and bloom habits. Hummingbirds are especially drawn to blooms with the right shape rather than just color alone, which means that the bowl-shaped flowers of chocolate cosmos are easy for hummingbirds to feed from.

One of the biggest advantages of chocolate cosmos is its extended bloom time. Flowering from midsummer into fall, it helps bridge any gaps that hummingbirds might experience during their migration from spring to summer. That's a crucial detail for gardeners who want to provide continuous nectar sources through the entire hummingbird season (March to May), as their high energy consumption often means that they have to rely on any plants they can find along their route. 

However, do ensure that the soil conditions for your chocolate cosmos aren't too rich by learning how to grow and take care of cosmos plants of this variety. This bloom does best in moderately fertile soil, and should be mulched in fall as the flowers are dying back to help suppress any weeds over its dormant period. Provided that you also have tubular flowers that bloom during spring in your garden, you could be helping hummingbirds a lot more than you know.