Lavandula coronopifolia Poir.
L. stricta Delile
Eng.: Stagshorn lavender. Spa.: Lavanda. Fre.: Lavande. Ara.: Ehrer, zeita (Egypt). Tamahaq: Tanet, ir’ir’, edghé, alannadghagh (Aïr).
Subshrub, evergreen, hermaphrodite, up to 1(1.5) m in height, erect, ramose. Stems and old branches with brownish or reddish-brown bark, slightly fissured. Young branches tetragonal, very long, slender, glabrescent, greenish-reddish. Leaves (1-4 × 0.5-1.5 cm), bipinnatisect (twice divided into linear segments), with segments that do not taper at the base, glabrous or glabrescent, petiolate, opposite, very numerous. Inflorescence in terminal long spikes (7-15 cm) and very sparse, with flowers in pairs, sometimes very far apart from each other. Without petaloid tufts of bracts at the top, as in previous species. Each flower with an ovate-lanceolate bract, shorter than half the calyx. Calyx ovoid-tubular, with 5 small teeth. Corolla deep or pale blue, tubular-campanulate, bilabiate, with shallow lobes. Fruit is minute and included in the persistent calyx.
Flowering:
March to May.
Fruiting:
May to June.
Habitat:
Mountains and plains, in the driest areas, depressions on the ground without salt and silty-sandy beds, in desert and subdesert environment.
Distribution:
Sahara and SW Asia Minor. In North Africa this is an unusual species but very spread out in the western and central Sahara, reaching the Mediterranean area in the Anti-Atlas, the Saharan Atlas and, towards the NE, almost to the Mediterranean Sea in the Sinai Peninsula.
Conservation status:
L. coronopifolia is rare but widely distributed species. Currently, it has not been assessed at a global level in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. In the Livre Rouge de la flore vasculaire du Maroc (Fennane, 2021) L. maroccana and L. mairei have been considered as Near Threatened (NT) and L. rejdali as Critically Endangered (CR).
