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Electronic Flora of South Australia species Fact Sheet

Family: Lamiaceae
Rosmarinus officinalis

Citation: L., Sp. Pl. 23 (1/33).

Synonymy: Not Applicable

Common name: Rosemary.

Description:
Perennial shrubs sometimes taller than 1 m, much-branched, with branches first more or less quadrangular becoming terete and woody, woolly to villous on and below the inflorescence with branched often stellately branched hairs as well as more or less sessile glands; leaves with the petiole 0-2 mm long; blade linear, 1.5-3.5 x 0.2-0.3 cm, obtuse to rounded, coriaceous, with recoiled margins, with scattered glands becoming glabrous above, woolly below.

Inflorescence a thyrse without a peduncle often on short lateral branches with cymose part-inflorescences usually reduced to a single flower with scalelike bracts; sepals connate at varying levels, 2-lipped, 13-veined, 5-6 mm long, with a broad dorsal lip with 3 teeth, with the anterior lip deeply 2-lobed, with stellately branched hairs and almost sessile glands; corolla white or pale-blue, and with purplish-blue markings, 2-lipped, with lips longer than the tube, to 12 mm long, with a few stellately branched hairs and glands on the outside, with the dorsal lip stiffly erect, 2-lobed, with the lower lip spathulate with 2 narrow lateral lobes and 1 broad anterior lobe with an irregularly crenate margin; stamens inserted above the middle of the corolla tube, with only the anterior pair producing anthers; filaments short, stout and glabrous, in the front pairs much smaller and delicate in the posterior pair; anthers divided into a terminal exserted fertile cell, a curved elongate connective and a second anther cell reduced to a hook on the back of the filament; ovary on a thick disk, deeply 4-lobed, with a stout style curved along the posterior of the corolla, with a deeply 2-fid stigma exserted at about the level of the anthers.

Mericarps oblong-obovoid, c. 3 mm long, rounded apically, slightly compressed centripetally and vaguely triangular in section, with margins rounded, with the attachment scar at the base of the keel inside, with an outer depressed ring c. 1 mm diam. and an inner smaller protruding one, densely irregularly granulate.

image of FSA3_Rosmarinus_off.jpg
Image source: fig. 557A in Jessop J.P. & Toelken H.R. (Ed.) 1986. Flora of South Australia (4th edn).

Published illustration: Hegi (1927) Illustrierte Flora von Mittel-Europa 5, 4:figs 3360-3362.

Distribution:  S.Aust.: MU, YP, SL.   Native to the Mediterranean region but now widely cultivated in Europe.

Conservation status: naturalised

Flowering time: mainly June — Dec.


SA Distribution Map based
on current data relating to
specimens held in the
State Herbarium of South Australia

Biology: No text

Author: Not yet available


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