(Dianthus barbatus), familiar old-fashioned garden plant, in the pink family (Caryophyllaceae), grown for its clusters of small bright-coloured flowers. It is usually treated as a garden biennial, seed sown the first year producing flowering plants the second year. The plant, growing to a height of 60 centimetres (2 feet), produces numerous flowers—white, pink, rose to violet, or sometimes bicoloured—with fringed petals.