Teucrium hircanicum Paradise Delight - Germander

Teucrium hircanicum Paradise Delight is a variety of germander selected for its many flowers and compact habit that works well as groundcover. It is an excellent perennial plant for rockeries and dry gardens. It develops numerous semi-evergreen, downy rosettes, and produces many long spikes of small flowers in a beautiful purple-pink colour that can be seen from afar in the garden. This plant is both very hardy and perfectly adapted to summer drought, but it fears above all winter humidity.

Teucrium hircanicum Paradise Delight is a herbaceous perennial plant in the family Lamiaceae, related to thymes and salvias. It is derives from species native to the arid hills of Iran and the Caucasus.  In well-drained soil, the plant can withstand temperatures as low as -15°C (5°F). It quickly forms colonies of basal rosettes composed of opposite, ovate to oblong, coarsely dentate leaves,which are a metallic green colour. The lamina is deeply veined, giving it a rough appearance although it is covered in downy bristles. The foliage is aromatic, revealing a subtle animal scent when crushed, which can smell a little like hay with the distant aromas of a sheep for some. Under the effect of intense drought or pronounced cold, this foliage can become deciduous. The spectacular flowering takes place from May-June to August depending on the climate. It takes the form of red and pubescent floral stems, 40 to 60 cm (16 to 24in) tall. Although small, the bilabiate flowers form magnificent long spikes in a purple-pink colour towards the top of the stems. They bloom from bottom to top. This plant naturalises very well through spontaneous sowing.

This little-known germander Paradise Delight is an easy to grow rockery or alpine plant, easy to associate with a whole range of small plants for dry terrain: thymes, cistuses, compact lavenders, creeping artemisias, helichrysums, Euphorbia myrsinites or Stachys lanata. It also forms pretty borders, paired with small perennial geraniums (Geranium sanguineum, Geranium macrorrhizum, Geranium renardii) or even Echinops ritro.