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Information by: The Plant Nerd Inc.        Photographer: Linda Engstrom/Hunter

Description

This hardy perennial is a useful, old-time garden plant with coarse, woolly gray green, wrinkled leaves and yellow, 1" flowers in ball-shaped whorls. It handles drought and poor soils but needs full sun.

Maintenance Tips

Phlomis fruticose is an herbaceous shrub that is native to the Mediterranean region but is frequently used in California native gardens. This is a dense shrub that can reach 4' tall and wide with whorls of bright yellow flowers reaching another 12" above the foliage. This plant has fuzzy leaves that can be quite irritating to the skin, eyes, and sinuses, so minimal pruning on these plants is desirable. To keep the pruning to a minimum, plant these plants in sunny locations with well-drained soil and give them 4-5' of space to reach their mature size. They send out the majority of their blooms in the spring and summer. Once the flowers are spent, the plant can be deadheaded or even sheared back to about a third. The plant will start sending out new growth quickly and possibly send out new blooms if the weather stays warm. Although this is an herbaceous plant, shearing will cause it to develop some woody branches in the interior. The plant will benefit greatly from occasional thinning of the branches to allow sunlight into the interior.