French lavender

Lavandula dentata, known as French or fringed lavender, is an evergreen aromatic shrub of the Lamiaceae family, native to the Mediterranean basin (Spain, the Balearic Islands, North Africa) and parts of the Arabian Peninsula. Plants form rounded bushes 60 to 100 centimetres tall and as broad, with slender woody stems that are square in cross-section and clothed in soft greyish-green foliage. The leaves are distinctive within the genus: opposite, narrowly linear-oblong, 2 to 4 centimetres long, with conspicuous rounded teeth along the margins (hence 'dentata'), and densely covered in short greyish hairs that release a pleasant rosemary-lavender fragrance when crushed. Flowering spikes are terminal, dense and short, 3 to 5 centimetres long, topped with a tuft of pale violet-purple sterile bracts; the small two-lipped flowers are pale lavender. Calyces and bracts are densely glandular-pubescent. It is widely grown ornamentally and harvested for essential oil.