Verbascum chaixii Album - Mullein

Verbascum chaixii 'Album' is an almost white-flowered, particularly decorative form of Mullein. It is an easy-to-grow, charming perennial plant with a strong personality when it sends its beautiful candles covered with almost white flowers with a small red-violet heart, towards the sky. Sometimes biennial, it easily self-seeds in sunny areas, in slightly neglected places, in light or rocky soil. It grows quickly and straight, bringing lightness and height to countryside or romantic flowerbeds.

Chaix Mullein belongs to the Scrophulariaceae family. It is native to central and southern Europe. 'Album' only differs from the species in the colour of its flowers, with a cream-white corolla instead of yellow.

This plant will reach about 1m (3ft) high when flowering, in fertile soil, sometimes much less in poor and dry soil. It grows quickly, and can reach its final size in a few weeks. It develops a rosette of basal leaves from which long, branched and leafy flowering stems emerge from June to August, in pyramidal panicles composed of open cup-shaped white, 2cm (1in) flowers, with a bright red-violet throat. They are tightly packed together and open in groups along the spike. The large basal leaves are oval to elliptical, wavy, dark green and covered with greyish fuzz. The leaves that cover the stems are much smaller. This mullein is a nectar-rich plant loved by bees. Perennial in theory, it sometimes behaves as a biennial, but easily self-seeds in light soil.

Verbascum chaixii 'Album' is a blessing for sunny slopes and rocky soils. However, the plant will be much more decorative in good garden soil with occasional watering during very dry weather. Natural scenes in slightly wild areas of the garden will be transformed by botanical or hybrid mulleins. Accompany them with hollyhocks, fraxinella, wild chicory, perennial flax or wonderful purple fennel. They are good companions for roses, just like foxgloves. It is better to surround them with perennials or shrubs such as catmints, hyssops or veronicas for example, to fill the space when they are not in bloom.