Tree germander
Teucrium fruticans
Family · Lamiaceae · Irritating
_Teucrium_fruticans_-_Flowers.jpg){kind=link}
The silvery shrub with lilac-blue flowers found in half the southern garden hedges and growing wild in limestone scrub. It shows from afar by the whiteness of its foliage, which looks frosted.
Scrubland · Walls and rocks · Town and roadside · Montado
Also known asshrubby germander, silver germander
How to tell it
Opposite oval leaves, dark green above and covered in pure white felt beneath. Young branches entirely white. Lilac-blue flowers with no upper lip, as in all germanders, and stamens protruding well out.
What it is confused with
Cat thyme germander
Teucrium capitatum
Size and flower: this is a shrub over a metre with large lilac-blue flowers; cat thyme germander is a low cushion with cream-coloured flower heads.
What it is for
Ornamental and hedging, and a bitter plant of traditional use. The same note as the other germanders applies: the genus has compounds linked to liver injury with prolonged use.
With documented traditional uses. Not a therapeutic indication and not a dose.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
No approved contributions for this entry yet.
Nothing appears here without a person reading it first. Contributions do not replace the entry or its warnings: until a botanist confirms, what is written above stands.