Thread: What's this?
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Old 13-06-2011, 09:33 PM
kay kay is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Apr 2010
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Hogg View Post
On Mon, 13 Jun 2011 08:05:20 +0100, Ellis Morgan
wrote:

I am feeling confused, is it purple toadflax (linaria purpuria) we are
talking about here?

It looks to me that the reallywildflowers catalogue shows a picture of
toadflax with a description of purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria)
which I found confusing. I wonder what you get if you buy some.

http://www.habitas.org.uk/flora/species.asp?item=4063
Purple-loosestrife - Lythrum salicaria - Natural England
Purple Loosestrife


I have both. What the OP has is linaria purpuria (purple toadflax).
When compared with lythrum salicaria (purple loosestrife), the
toadflax flowers have much more blue in them (RHS encyclo says
violet-purple), and as other have said, the flowers are like miniature
snap-dragons. I would describe the loosestrife flowers as magenta
rather than purple (RHS encyclo says purple-red to purple-pink), so
IMO the reallwildflowers description is inaccurate. From their picture
it's not really clear whether it's showing linaria or lythrum, but I
agree it looks more like the former.
Strange. To me, the photo looks far more like Lythrum a) the flowers have a raggedy look about them - Linaria flowers look far neater, a result of the tucked-in shape of the petals b) the colour is the more rosy purple of the Lythrum not the bluer colour of the linaria c) the leaves are the pure green of the Lythrum, not the grey green of the Linaria.
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