Limonium is a genus of about 600 flowering plant species. Members are also known as sea-lavender, statice, caspia or marsh-rosemary. Despite their common names, species are not related to the
lavenders or to
rosemary. They are instead in
Plumbaginaceae, the plumbago or leadwort family.
The generic name is from the Latin līmōnion, used by
Pliny for a wild plant and is ultimately derived from the Ancient Greek leimon (λειμών, 'meadow').[1]
Distribution
The genus has a
subcosmopolitan distribution in Europe, Asia, Africa, North America and Australia. By far the greatest diversity (over 100 species) is in the area stretching from the
Canary Islands east through the
Mediterranean region to central Asia; for comparison, North America only has three native Limonium species.[2]
Description
Sea-lavenders normally grow as
herbaceousperennial plants, growing 10–70 cm tall from a
rhizome; a few (mainly from the Canary Islands) are woody
shrubs up to 2 metres tall. Many species flourish in
saline soils, and are therefore common near
coasts and in
salt marshes, and also on saline,
gypsum and
alkaline soils in continental interiors.
The
leaves are simple, entire to lobed, and from 1–30 cm long and 0.5–10 cm broad; most of the leaves are produced in a dense basal
rosette, with the flowering stems bearing only small brown scale-leaves (
bracts). The
flowers are produced on a branched
panicle or
corymb, the individual flowers are small (4–10 mm long) with a five-lobed
calyx and
corolla, and five
stamens; the flower colour is pink or violet to purple in most species, white or yellow in a few. Many of the species are
apomictic. The fruit is a small
capsule containing a single
seed, partly enclosed by the persistent calyx.
Features
Several species are popular
garden flowers; they are generally known to gardeners as statices. They are grown both for their flowers and for the appearance of the
calyx, which remains on the plant after the true flowers have fallen, and are known as "everlasting flowers".
There are about 600 species in the genus, many of them local
endemic species with a very restricted range.[3] Species not given a common name here are generally referred to simply as "sea-lavender", "statice," or "marsh-rosemary".