2 October 2011, 3:39 pm
I was walking around in Tehama County today(Northern California) when I stumbled across a pretty little plant. Everything else in the area has been dead and dry, though I did find a lot more of the same dried plant nearby. I picked a sprig of it, and it smells very strongly of tea tree or just as medicinal and antiseptic. I have looked everywhere online to see if it was a local herb, a noxious weed, an adapted plant from somewhere else, and I haven't quite been able to identify it. The mature plants looked to be no taller than 24" or less, and it grows in separate or branched sprigs. The live ones I picked have yellowish to red tinted stems, probably because it was close to dying, and the leaves and stems are just a little bit fuzzy, with leaves going all the way up the stem being a yellowy green, long, narrow, and deeply creviced, and opposite, alongside these tiny flowers that look like they would belong in the mint or lavender family, purple with little yellow centers, they are symetrical with two long top petals longer than the rest curling away from the rest of the flower. My suspicion is that it belongs somewhere in the sage family, or possibly the mint family. I just haven't found the variety yet.... Read More »
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