Purple jerusalem sage

Phlomis purpurea, the purple Jerusalem sage or Spanish phlomis, is an evergreen subshrub in the family Lamiaceae native to the Iberian Peninsula and Morocco, where it grows on dry rocky calcareous slopes, garrigue, open pine and oak woodland, and disturbed scrub. The plant produces a woody base from which arise erect to ascending stems 50-150 cm tall, the whole plant densely clothed in greyish-white stellate tomentum that gives the foliage a silvery-grey appearance. Leaves are opposite, ovate-lanceolate to oblong-lanceolate, 4-10 cm long, with a finely crenate margin, a rounded to slightly cordate base, a long petiole, and an upper surface that is greenish-grey beneath a sparser indumentum while the lower surface is much more densely white-felted. The inflorescence is composed of several superposed dense axillary verticillasters (whorls) of 6-15 flowers each, with leafy bracts subtending each whorl. Each flower is 2-3 cm long, two-lipped, with a hooded helmet-like upper lip and a three-lobed lower lip, the corolla a soft pinkish-purple to rosy-mauve (distinguishing it from the yellow-flowered P. fruticosa), with a tubular five-toothed calyx clothed in stellate hairs. Flowering occurs in late spring.