Lavandula stoechas

Lavandula stoechas, the Spanish lavender or topped lavender (U.S.) or French lavender (U.K.), is a species of flowering plant in the family Lamiaceae, occurring naturally in several Mediterranean countries, including France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. An evergreen shrub, it usually grows to 30–100 cm (12–39 in) tall and occasionally up to 2 m (7 ft) high in the subspecies luisieri. The leaves are 1–4 cm long, greyish and tomentose. The inflorescence is crowned by a lump of purple and oblong-egg-shaped bracts , which are about 5 cm long. The underneath 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 (4–12 in) 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, depending on the climate where it inhabits. The Latin specific epithet stoechas comes from the Greek stoichas meaning “in rows”. It is also the Greek name for this species.