Description

Family Scrophulariaceae
Originating from South Africa

• Soft textured grey/green foliage densely covers the branches.
• Pale lilac blue, scented flowers appear in late summer over a long period.
• Easy to grow in full sun, responding well to pruning to maintain bushy compact growth.

Velvety, olive green, and silver foliage is borne on upright stems, cascading during the summer under the weight of foliage and flowers. The large deciduous, handsome, arrow-tip-shaped leaves have a particularly tactile quality, covered in fine, soft hairs like the young stems, giving the plant great character. A rewarding plant to grow due to its vigour, it responds well to pruning to keep it compact and bushy. Its adaptability is an added quality; as its stems thicken and become woody, it can be pruned to form a miniature tree-like shape. Alternatively, in spring, it can be treated in the opposite way and coppiced down close to ground level.

Lovely pale lilac flowers are produced in cone-shaped spikes, in profusion near the tips of the branches, and are loved by all pollinators, particularly butterflies. The blooms’ pale color is enriched by their orange throats, adding complexity to the hues in the multitudes of individual flowers packed into each flower spike.

Easy to grow in all but heavy wet soils, it flowers best and grows its densest in full sun, although it can be grown in light dappled shade. In Africa, it sometimes grows out of sheer cliff faces, indicating its toughness and tolerance of poor dry conditions.

Height and spread after 5 – 10 years 4m x 4m.