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Linaria purpurea
Also called Linaria Purpurea Pink Form, Purple Linaria
Purple toadflax is a perennial herb from central and southern Italy, grown for its long season of violet snapdragon-like flowers. It thrives in full sun and well-drained soil.
Linaria purpurea or purple toadflax is a purple-flowered plant in the plantain family Plantaginaceae, endemic to central and southern regions of Italy including Sicily.
It is widely planted in gardens and is also naturalised in several other temperate regions globally.
This plant is poisonous to livestock, though ruminants may tend to avoid consuming it. The larvae of some species of Lepidoptera (butterflies) use this plant as a food source.
In a recent study conducted in Italy the plant was found to contain a compound exhibiting antifungal activity, which drastically reduced the production of aflatoxin B1 in Aspergillus flavus Link., making it a potential natural and 'green' anti-aflatoxin B1 agent suitable for use in the food industry.
It is endemic to central and southern Italy, in Abruzzo, Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Emilia-Romagna, Lazio, Marche, Molise, Puglia, Sicily, Toscana, and Umbria. It occurs naturally in cliffs, scree, woodland edges, and on uncultivated land. It has a wide environmental range, growing from sea level up to 1,900 m, and up to 2,500 m on Gran Sasso d'Italia.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Linaria purpurea 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.
