Acanthoprasium frutescens
Credits
Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles
Recommended citation
'Acanthoprasium frutescens' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.
Common Names
- Shrubby Horehound
Synonyms
- Molucella frutescens L.
- Ballota spinosa Link
- Ballota frutescens (L.) Woods
Other taxa in genus
A shrub 15–60 cm high of rounded bushy habit; young shoots very slender, downy, armed at each joint with a pair of slender, pale, mostly twin spines 6–13 mm long. Leaves opposite, ovate, 3–9-lobed or sometimes merely toothed, rounded or tapered at the base, pointed to rounded at the apex; 13–25 mm long, scarcely as wide; dull green, downy on both surfaces; stalk slender, 3–12.5 mm long. Flowers very shortly stalked, produced singly, in pairs, or in threes in the leaf-axils. Calyx narrowly funnel-shaped, c. 8 mm long, 10-ribbed, downy, spreading at the mouth into 5 ovate slender-pointed lobes. Corolla white or lilac two-lipped, the lower lip 3-lobed, the upper lip densely covered with long white hairs. The whole flower is about 16 mm long and c. 12.5 mm across the calyx-lobes, which stand out beyond the corolla. July and August. (Bean 1976a; Patzak 1972)
Distribution France Italy
Habitat Rocky places in the SW Alps
USDA Hardiness Zone 8
RHS Hardiness Rating H4
Conservation status Not evaluated (NE)
Native of France in the Basses Alpes and Alpes Maritimes, also of Italy; related the widespread Black Horehound (Ballota nigra), with which it used to share a genus. It is a long time since it was first cultivated in the UK and Gerard seems to have grown it in his physic garden at Holborn in 1596. Its tenure, however, has always been uncertain and intermittent owing to its tenderness and lack of notable beauty. Its flowers, with the brush-like tuft of hairs on the corolla, are curious and interesting. It can only be grown in the warmer parts of Britain and in the sunniest, sheltered spots (Bean 1976a). We have come across no recent records of it in cultivation.