Seasonal Wild Flowers

Latin name

Prunella laciniata 

Family

Lamiaciae

Flowering season

June to August

English distribution

It is rare and very thinly scattered throughout the

country.

For a map see the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland

– Cut-Leaved Selfheal

Habitat

It is a neophyte which has been cultivated in the UK since

the 1710s and known in the wild since the 1880s.

It grows in dry, calcareous grassland.

Description

Cut-Leaved Selfheal is a rhizomatous perennial herb

growing up to 30cm.

The flowers are in a dense, broad cylindrical spike.

They are white, up to 17mm, and made up of a straight

corolla tube, a lower 3-lobed lip and an upper hooded

lip.

There are 4 stamens, hidden in the hood.

The style has a forked stigma.

The sepals have pointed teeth.

The flowers are in the axils of a dense spiral of hairy

bracts.

The leaves are broadly lanceolate and are variably

divided to the midrib.

Stems are square and hairy.

Cut-leaved Selfheal differs mainly from the much more

common Selfheal by the colour of the flowers, white

instead of mauve, and the divided leaves.

It mar cross with Selfheal to form Hybrid Selfheal.