Verbascum Spica - Mullein

Verbascum 'Spica', also known as Mullein or White Mullein Spica, is an easy-going perennial, charming and imposing perennial which sends immense spikes covered with wide, pure white flowers soaring towards the sky from a lush, silver, downy basal rosette. It is often cultivated as a biennial and readily self-seeds in slightly neglected areas, even in light or rocky soil, growing quickly and straight. This towering beauty is irreplaceable in romantic, slightly wild, flower beds.

White Mullein 'Spica' belongs to the scrophulariaceae family. It is a white form of Verbascum phlomoides, a beautiful native plant, widespread in Europe in uncultivated and rocky areas. This plant can reach 150 cm (59in) high when flowering, even more in fertile soil. Its growth is rapid, with the final size achieved in just one month. It has a rosette from which long branched floral stems emerge. It will flower from June to August, in pyramidal spikes composed of wide open 4 cm (2in), pure white flowers, tightly packed together and opening along the spike. The oval to elliptical, wavy, silver-grey leaves are 20 cm (8in) long and covered in silky hairs. This nectar-rich mullein is loved by bees. Although theoretically perennial, it is often grown as a biennial as it is short-lived, but it readily self-seeds in light soil.

Verbascum phlomoides 'Spica' is a godsend for "impossible" slopes. Natural scenes in slightly wild areas of the garden will be transformed by both botanical and hybrid varieties of mullein. Plant them with hollyhocks, fraxinella, wild chicory, perennial flax, or marvellous purple fennel.