A Dutch "old friend of Malta" has managed to "create" the world's first black hyacinth.

Hans Kapiteyn hails from one of the oldest bulb growing families in the Netherlands and has been visiting Malta each year for the past 40.

Inevitably, he always visits Malta on his birthday and has struck a friendship with Peter Calamatta, who needs no introduction in the local scene.

"We had met when he first came to Malta and I was still working at Ghammieri and Malta simply fascinates him. When I ask him why he likes Malta so much, he tells me he sees what we don't see or what we take for granted and which we are losing and destroying fast," Mr Calamatta says.

Mr Kapiteyn loves to have a drink at village bars, speak to ordinary people and forge new acquaintances.

He makes it a point to visit St John's co-Cathedral, in Valletta every day. "It's a gem", he says.

Mr Calamatta said Mr Kapiteyn praises Malta and says it is being badly marketed abroad.

"He is not praising Malta because he wants something in return. The amount of business we do with him is negligible compared to the plane loads of bulbs he sends to Japan and America. He is simply in love with the island," Mr Calamatta said. Mr Kapiteyn will be donating thousands of bulbs to the government to be planted in embellishment projects next year.

His black hyacinth was one of the main highlights on display at the Chelsea Flower Show this year. Mr Kapiteyn has spent 16 years creating Midnight Mystique, as the hyacinth has been called. The black flower was created by cross-fertilising a pure white hyacinth with a blue seedling, followed by painstaking years of bulb harvesting and reselecting for the darkest colour.

It is now being sold by plant specialists Thompson and Morgan for £7.99 a bulb but the three original bulbs were bought for £150,000.

Creating black flowers has been an obsession with many growers but Mr Kapiteyn says it is impossible to create a truly black flower. "There will always be a touch of purple or magenta but with the new hyacinth, it looks black in all but the brightest sunshine," he said.

Flower colour is determined by the wavelengths of light reflected from the petals. Pigments in the petals absorb certain wavelengths and other wavelengths are reflected back towards the viewers' eyes, creating the colour seen.

Black petals cannot exist because the pigments that colour flowers do not occur in black. But plants such as Mr Kapiteyn's hyacinth appear close to black because their pigments are absorbing most wavelengths of light.

Black petals are rare in nature because insects pollinate only bright coloured plants and seem to prefer red, yellow, blue and white.