Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Lavandula stoechas

Flower heads. Australian Plant Image Index, photographers RG & FJ Richardson, garden at Meredith, Vic

Stems with spent flowers. Photographer Jackie Miles

Plant. Photographer Jackie Miles

Common name

Italian Lavender, Spanish Lavender, Topped Lavender

Family

Lamiaceae

Where found

Woodland, pastures, roadsides, disturbed sites, gardens, waste areas, and along streams. Sydney area and Canberra. Occasionally elsewhere.

Notes

Introduced shrub to 1 m high, occasionally sprawling. Stems square in cross section, woolly hairy with greyish hairs. Older stems are somewhat woody, rough, rounded in cross section. Leaves strongly aromatic when rubbed, opposite each other, 1–3 cm long, 2–5 mm wide, stalkless, margins curved down, tips somewhat pointed to blunt. Flowers with a strong lavender smell. Flower clusters dense, 20-50 mm long, with up to to five purple, deep bluish-purple, or violet, petal-like bracts each 10-50 mm long at the top. Individual flowers inconspicous, 5–8 mm long, tubular, the tube white tinged blue towards the top, with 5 dark purple lobes. Each flower subtended by a deep bluish purple bract. Flowers Aug.–Jan.

Lavandula stoechas subsp. stoechas in Vic.

PlantNET description:  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Lavandula~stoechas  (accessed 22 January, 2021)