Linaria Alpina Alpine Toadflax Purple-flowered Summer Plant
ALPINE TOADFLAX
Alpine toadflax is not necessarily an annual, although it is well known as such. In ideal circumstances, it will survive the winter. This often happens on rockeries with perfect drainage, but the gardener has to wait and see. It is therefore better to regard the small plant – it grows to 4-8 in tall – as an annual. The stems with their bluish-grey foliage branch out and become pendulous without any support, which makes the plant eminently suitable for hanging baskets. The attractive, violet flowers, V4 in long, with an orange spot, appear continually from June until the end of the summer. Although it is quite feasible to sow the species oneself, I was unable to find the seed at any of the suppliers. The plants themselves are quite often from growers of rockery plants and suppliers of annuals.
Linaria alpina, sometimes called alpine toadflax, is a purple-flowered member of the genus Linaria. It is found in many mountain ranges in southern and central Europe from the Sierra de Gredos and the Montes de León in Spain to the mountains of the Balkan Peninsula including the Jura mountains Alps, Pyrenees, and central Apennines.
