Medicinal and aromatic plants – industrial profiles

Section 2: 
Dentatae
Suárez-Cerv. and Seoane-Camba
Woody shrub with distinctive leaves, linear-lanceolate in shape with regular shallow-rounded
lobes. Flower spike compact and dense, topped by a tuft of enlarged and coloured sterile floral
bracts (a coma). The fertile bracts broadly obovate with an acute apex, with reticulate veining.
Flower whorls 5–7(–9) flowered with minute bracteoles. Calyx with a short stalk (pedicellate),
thirteen-nerved, the middle calyx lobe modified into a large appendage up to 1.5
the width 
of calyx tube. Corolla tube only slightly exerted from calyx 
c
. 2 mm. Stigma bilobed. Nutlets
elliptic in shape with a minute basal scar producing mucilage on wetting.
Contains a single species, 
L. dentata
, recognised in this treatment with two varieties and two
forms. This species has an interesting distribution being native to South Spain and Balearic
Islands, western North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia) with a disjunction to the SW Arabian
Peninsula (Saudi Arabia and Yemen Arab Republic) and Ethiopia (Abyssinian Highlands). It is
naturalised in Portugal and Corsica and widely cultivated elsewhere principally as an ornamental
in frost free areas as it is not reliably hardy below 0°C.
L. dentata
was previously placed in section 
Stoechas
, where its position has always been rather
anomalous. This was commented on by Chaytor (1937) and first taxonomically recognised by
Rozeira (1949), who created a separate subsection 
Dentata
, for this species within section
Stoechas
. A new section 
Dentata
(
Dentatae
), was created by Suarez-Cervera and Seoane-Camba
(1986), to accommodate 
L. dentata
. Its affinities also appear to lie closer to section 
Lavandula
rather than section 
Stoechas
.
The taxonomy of the genus 
Lavandula 
L.
15
Figure 2.8 L. x intermedia
‘Grosso’ – cultivated at Norfolk Lavender, UK. The most widely cultivated
lavandin for oil production. (See Color Plate III.)

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