Woolly bluecurls is a spectacular many-branched suffrutescent perennial growing as much as 5' tall with opposite, sessile, linear-lanceolate revolute leaves, green above and lanate beneath, with fascicles of shorter leaves in the leaf axils.  The flowers are in a series of dense, sessile clusters along the upper part of the stem, and the stem and calyces are covered with blue, pink or white woolly hairs.  The flowers are two-lipped and blue, the corolla tube slender and deeply 5-cleft, and the four 1-1/2" long stamens greatly exserted and arching.  The style is two-lobed at the tip.  Woolly bluecurls inhabits dry slopes below 4500' in coastal scrub and chaparral in the Coast Ranges from San Diego Co. to Monterey Co.  It is quite common, blooming from May to August.

Click here for Latin name derivations: 1) Trichostema 2) lanatum.
Pronunciation: tri-KOS-te-ma la-NAY-tum.
Click here for Botanical Term Meanings.