Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Lobularia maritima

Flowers. Photographer JC Schou, Denmark

Flowering plants. Photographers Forest & Kim Starr, Hawaii, USA

Seed case. Photographer Zoya Akulova, California, USA

Line drawing in Britton, N.L., and A. Brown. 1913. An illustrated flora of the northern United States, Canada and the British Possessions. Vol. 2: 153

Common name

Sweet alyssum, Sweet Alice

Family

Brassicaceae

Where found

Garden escape. Grassy areas, roadsides, disturbed sites, and sand dunes. Coastal north from Nowra. Sydney area. away from the coasr. ACT. Occasionally elsewhere.

Notes

Introduced perennial herb to 0.4 m tall, hairy, with simple or T-shaped hairs (needs a hand lens or a macro app on your phone/tablet to see). Leaves basal and alternating up the stems, 2-4 cm long, linear to lance head shaped, hairy, margins entire. Flowers fragrant, with 4 white, pink, or purple petals, each 3-4 mm long, in dense clusters up the stems. Flowers autumn–spring. Seed cases elliptic, oval, or almost round, 2–3 mm wide; inflated, hairy, one seed in each half. Stalks 5–10 mm long, spreading.

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