ITALIAN LAVENDER

This is Italian (or Spanish) Lavender (Lavandula stoechas, or "Princess" Lavender). It is an evergreen shrub that usually grows to between 30 and 100 cm tall and occasionally up to 2 m tall in the subspecies 'luisieri'. The leaves are 1–4 cm long, greyish and tomentose. The inflorescence is crowned by a mass of purple elongated ovoid bracts about 5 cm long. The lower flowers form a tight rectangular in cross-section. The upper of the five teeth has a wrong-heart-shaped appendage. The crown is blackish-violet, up to 8 mm long and indistinct two-lipped. 

The flowers, which appear in late spring and early summer, are pink to purple, produced on spikes 2 cm long at the top of slender, leafless stems 10–30 cm long; each flower is subtended by a bract 4–8 mm long. At the top of the spike are a number of much larger, sterile bracts (no flowers between them), 10–50 mm long and bright lavender purple (rarely white). It blooms in spring and early summer, from the month of March in its native habitat, depending on the climate in which it grows. The Latin specific epithet stoechas comes from the Greek stoichas meaning “in rows”. It is also the Greek name for this species.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.