Solved PlantID please: might be an historic plant

It's Phlomis fruiticosa, Jerusalem sage and not russelliana. We have both in our garden.

Not sure of the technical explanation but fruitcosa grows as a shrub type plant with flowers all over it and ours is about 50 years old and six feet tall. Its leaves are smaller than russelliana and have a greyish tinge to them.

Russelliana is a perennial with a single flower stem that usually grows up to waist height, with flowers around the stem but dies back each year. The lower leaves are evergreen and quite large and, in our garden, it spreads quite well by root runs.



We tend to dig out a lot of it a couple of times a year (we have it in various areas of our garden) and completely fill the boot of our car with the back seats down and deliver the mass of them unpotted to a charity garden centre near us. They pot them up and say they can sell as many as we can give them. The leaves are bigger than fruiticosa and green. The bees adore them.

 

I forgot to add that if you grow Russelliana then the flower stem is excellent for flower arranging when left to become brown later in the year. It still carries the flower heads all the way up but not the petals.

 

Neither varieties are work intensive. Fruiticosa needs very little attention. We rarely need to do any maintenance on it. When new it will need watering in dry weather and apart from that we don't do anything but say hello to it.

Russelliana only needs a small amount of maintenance. Yet again, water to help it get established. Cut off the flowering stem in the Autumn. If it starts to spread then dig out the new plants which don't root deeply. Very easy and evergreen so almost no need to sort out leaves.