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Figwort Family [Scrophulariaceae] |
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15th June 2015 | Photo: © Bastiaan Brak |
Often planted but self-seeds in hedges alongside roads, on banks or along woodland edges. |
15th June 2015 | Photo: © Bastiaan Brak |
Branches very long and thin, overarching or dangling downwards with many bunches of flowers. |
15th June 2015 | Photo: © Bastiaan Brak |
Flowers broken up into small bunches (unlike those of Butterfly-Bush which are in one much shorter but continuous bunch of flowers which tapers to a blunt point at the end) |
15th June 2015 | Photo: © Bastiaan Brak |
Upper leaves much thinner but also shorter, branching off from the curved flowering-'cane'. [The broad leaves just behind it and to the left have nothing to do with Alternate-leaved Butterfly-bush]. The leaves are alternate up the stem and narrowly elliptical in shape. |
15th June 2015 | Photo: © Bastiaan Brak |
The flowers themselves are much the same as those of Butterfly-Bush: they are lilac coloured, have 4 petals. |
15th June 2015 | Photo: © Bastiaan Brak |
Flowers have a deep reddish-purple hole in the centre - being a long narrow reddish-purple cylindrical tube at the rear. |
15th June 2015 | Photo: © Bastiaan Brak |
One floret here has but 3 petals. |
15th June 2015 | Photo: © Bastiaan Brak |
Stems more like canes growing out of the ground. Lower leaves both longer and wider (but possibly keeping more or less the same shape and aspect ratio) than the upper leaves. They are still narrow-elliptical in shape. |
Easily mistaken for the related (same genus) : Butterfly-Bush (Buddleja davidii) but although that has similar coloured and shaped flowers, has them in much shorter only-slightly drooping panicles which taper towards the end (whereas Alternate-leaved Butterfly-bush has much longer racemes which droop much more and have flowers in dozens of small bunches. [Butterfly-bush might also have either white flowers or blue-purple flowers].
Not to be semantically confused with : Some similarities to the orange flowered relatives : Orange-Ball-Tree (Buddleja globosa) and Weyer's Butterfly-Bush (Buddleja × weyeriana). The former has globular clusters of flowers just at the ends of short stalks whereas the latter is a hybrid between Butterfly-Bush and Orange-Ball-Tree. Uniquely identifiable characteristics Distinguishing Feature : the long and drooping racemes of dozens of bunches of small lilac-coloured flowers.
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Buddleja | alternifolia | ⇐ Global Aspect ⇒ | Scrophulariaceae |
Buddleja (Butterfly-Bushes) |
Figwort Family [Scrophulariaceae] |