Lavandula - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavandula

Lavandula
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lavandula (common name lavender) is a genus of 39 known species of flowering plants in the mint family,
Lamiaceae. It is native to the Old World and is found from Cape Verde and the Canary Islands, Europe across to
northern and eastern Africa, the Mediterranean, southwest Asia to southeast India. Many members of the genus
are cultivated extensively in temperate climates as ornamental plants for garden and landscape use, for use as
culinary herbs, and also commercially for the extraction of essential oils. The most widely cultivated species,
Lavandula angustifolia, is often referred to as lavender, and there is a colour named for the shade of the flowers
of this species.

Description
The genus includes annual or short-lived herbaceous perennial plants, and shrub-like perennials, subshrubs or
small shrubs.[2]
Leaf shape is diverse across the genus. They are simple in some commonly cultivated species; in others they are
pinnately toothed, or pinnate, sometimes multiple pinnate and dissected. In most species the leaves are covered
in fine hairs or indumentum, which normally contain the essential oils.[2]
Flowers are borne in whorls, held on spikes rising above the foliage, the spikes being branched in some species.
Some species produce coloured bracts at the apices. The flowers may be blue, violet or lilac in the wild species,
occasionally blackish purple or yellowish. The calyx is tubular. The corolla is also tubular, usually with five
lobes (the upper lip often cleft, and the lower lip has two clefts).[2][3]

Nomenclature and taxonomy

L. stoechas, L. pedunculata and L. dentata were known in Roman times.[4] From the Middle Ages onwards, the
European species were considered two separate groups or genera, Stoechas (L. stoechas, L. pedunculata, L.
dentata) and Lavandula (L. spica and L. latifolia), until Linnaeus combined them. He only recognised five
species in Species Plantarum (1753), L. multifida and L. dentata (Spain) and L. stoechas and L. spica from
Southern Europe. L. pedunculata was included within L. stoechas.
By 1790, L. pinnata and L. carnosa were recognised. The latter was subsequently transferred to Anisochilus. By
1826 Frdric Charles Jean Gingins de la Sarraz listed 12 species in three sections, and by 1848 eighteen
species were known.[4]
One of the first modern major classifications was that of Dorothy Chaytor in 1937 at Kew. The six sections she
proposed for 28 species still left many intermediates that could not easily be assigned. Her sections included
Stoechas, Spica, Subnudae, Pterostoechas, Chaetostachys and Dentatae. However all the major cultivated and
commercial forms resided in the Stoechas and Spica sections. There were four species within Stoechas
(Lavandula stoechas, L. dentata, L. viridis and L. pedunculata) while Spica had three (L. officinalis (now L.
angustifolia), L. latifolia and L. lanata). She believed that the garden varieties were hybrids between true
lavender L. angustifolia and spike lavender (L. latifolia). [5]
More recently, work has been done by Upson and Andrews, and currently Lavandula is considered to have three
subgenera.

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