Limonium is a genus of 120 flower species. Members are also known as Sea Lavender, Statice, or Marsh-rosemary. Limonium is in Plumbaginaceae, the plumbago or leadwort family. Despite their common names, species are not related to the lavenders or to rosemary.
The genus has a subcosmopolitan distribution in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and North America. By far the greatest diversity (over 100 species) is in the area stretching from the Canary Islands east through the Mediterranean region to central Asia; for comparison, North America only has three native species.[1]
Sea-lavenders normally grow as herbaceous perennial plants, growing 10–70 cm tall from a rhizome; a few (mainly from the Canary Islands) are woody shrubs up to 2 metres tall. Many species flourish in saline soils, and are therefore common near coasts and in salt marshes, and also on saline, gypsum and alkaline soils in continental interiors.
