Authors: Lag.  

Botanical Description

Junellia thymifolia). The sketchy and unsatisfactory original diagnosis indicates a much-branched pygmy shrublet with small, sessile fleshy foliage, often crowded but never

imbricate, the ovate entire blades roughly bristle-fringed and strongly revolute. Leaves on older branches may have reduced congested shoots in their axils. The solitary rounded and mutiflowered spikes of pale blue-violet arise at the ends of the fertile shoots. The species was first encountered in Santa Cruz province of Argentina on windswept, dry steppe. Additional later records (without descriptions) widened its distribution to scattered throughout Patagonia including Chile, adding arid river valleys to its habitats. It is now considered to belong in the V. azorelloides-V. patagonica series. A similar plant, collected from northern Argentinean Andean Patagonia at 1200-1350m, persists in horticulture. Although first determined as V. thymifolia, it later became known as V. scabrido-glandulosa. It forms a rigid shrublet 25-45cm tall by 60-100cm across from woody stock, the uppermost fertile stems slender and shortly hairy with internodes up to 2.5cm long. Leaves similar to V. thymifolia, except that rough hairs and glands cover all the surfaces of the leaf which is not strongly revolute, but linear to lanceolate to about 1mm broad and heathlike. Flowers 9 by 8-9mm, fragrant, sessile, five to twelve in dense head-like spikes, summer. Given a sunny sheltered site on light soil with sharp drainage, this modestly attractive, rather slow-growing species is reasonably hardy outside in the British Isles.

V. trifurcata Phil. see V. uniflora