The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Lepechinia fragrans
Also called Fragrant Pitcher Sage
Island pitchersage is a fragrant, fuzzy grey-green shrub from southern California and the Channel Islands, grown for its scented foliage and bumblebee-attracting flowers. It needs sun or light shade and well-drained soil; pinch it back to keep it compact.
Lepechinia fragrans is a flowering herbaceous shrub known by the common names island pitchersage and fragrant pitchersage. It is a member of the Lamiaceae, or mint family, but like other Lepechinia, the flowers are borne in racemes instead of in mintlike whorls.
The Lepechinia fragrans plant is easy to grow, and is easy to propagate from seed, but can be a short-lived ornamental plant in the garden. Lepechinia fragrans "has the most attractive flowers and most pleasing scent of all our native pitcher sage species" according to California Native Plants for the Garden. It is pollinated by bumblebees.
It will grow in sun or light shade, and does best in soils with good drainage. It should be pinched back to create a more compact, fuller plant.
Lepechinia fragrans is endemic to California. It is found in open areas in chaparral, in dry ravines, on rocky slopes and ridgetops, between 60 and 1100 meters. It is known in the Trifuno Pass area of the Santa Monica Mountains and in the San Gabriel Mountains, as well as the north Channel Islands. It may also exist in Ventura County and areas on the south coast below Los Angeles County, California.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Lepechinia fragrans by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
