Definition of "zinnia"

[…] the Consul at this moment greeted Mr. Quincey's cat, momentarily forgetting its owner again as the grey, meditative animal, with a tail so long it trailed on the ground, came stalking through the zinnias: […]

1947, Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, page 134

Santa sighed at the unfairness of it all and slammed the picture down on the mantelpiece among the bowl of wax fruit and the bouquet of paper zinnias and the statue of the Virgin Mary and the figurine of the Infant of Prague.

a. 1969, John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces, Penguin, published 1981