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Santolina chamaecyparissus L.

Lavender Cotton

Modern name

Santolina chamaecyparissus L.

Synonyms

S. incana Lam.

A white bush, 1 to 2 ft high in this country, forming a close, leafy mass; foliage persistent; stems semi-woody, covered the first season with a thick white felt. Leaves alternate, very crowded on the shoots, the largest 1 to 112 in. long, with clusters of shorter ones in their axils, all very narrow (18 in. or less wide), and furnished with thick teeth or projections set in rows of about four. The whole leaf is clothed with a white felt. Flower-heads bright yellow, 12 to 34 in. across, hemispherical, solitary at the end of an erect, slender stalk 4 to 6 in. long, terminating short lateral twigs of the year. There are no ray-florets.

Native of the Western and Central Mediterranean region; cultivated in Britain since the middle of the 16th century. It is a beautiful and interesting plant, probably the whitest of all hardy shrubs, and bears its showy flower-heads in July so thickly that they almost touch. The plant has a rather agreeable odour when lightly rubbed, but this becomes too strong and acrid to be wholly pleasant when the leaves are crushed. Formerly used in medicine as a vermifuge. The leaf has a curious structure suggestive of the stems of some lycopods; it consists of a central axis on which are set, often in whorls, short, thick, blunt projections.

var. nana Hort. S. chamaecyparissus var. corsica Hort., not Fiori – A cultivated variant, 1 to 112 ft high, with a lower, denser, more compact habit. Suitable for the rock garden.


Genus

Santolina

Other species in the genus