Limonium axillare(Forssk.) Kuntze

Sea lavender

WFO wfo-0001095147 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 2 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 2 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Limonium axillare, photographed by Jean-Paul Boerekamps
fig. a Jean-Paul Boerekamps, CC0 1.0 / 2021-11-03 / obs. 168222720

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Accession
K001572283
Filed as
Limonium axillare (Forssk.) Kuntze
Det. by
Erben, M.
Collected
Hein, P.; Bahah, S. O.; Bashmela, S. M.; Kilian, N. 1999-11-18
Origin
YE
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. We link to the digitised sheet rather than rehosting it, because the holding institutions do not serve their images to third parties reliably and we are not going to show you a picture we cannot actually deliver. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 11 botanical countries

Regions where Limonium axillare is native: Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan-South Sudan, Iran, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Sinai, Yemen, Pakistan DjiboutiEgyptEritreaSomaliaSudan-South SudanIranOmanSaudi ArabiaSinaiYemenPakistan
Native distribution of Limonium axillare, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Djibouti DJI AFRICA
Egypt EGY
Eritrea ERI
Somalia SOM
Sudan-South Sudan SUD
Iran IRN ASIA-TEMPERATE
Oman OMA
Saudi Arabia SAU
Sinai SIN
Yemen YEM
Pakistan PAK ASIA-TROPICAL

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Where it actually grows measured, from 37 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 13.3 °C 16.3 °C 25.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 31.9 °C 34.0 °C 39.2 °C
Annual rainfall 7 mm 81 mm 146 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 0 mm 0 mm 6 mm

It is not found anywhere that gets close to freezing. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 37 research-grade observations of Limonium axillare that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 15 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Eurychiton adensis Nimmo
  • Limonium arabicum (Jaub. & Spach) Kuntze
  • Limonium wendelboi Bokhari
  • Statice adensis (Nimmo) Boiss.
  • Statice arabica Jaub. & Spach
  • Statice arabica f. glomerata N.Terrac.
  • Statice attenuata Schult.
  • Statice axillaris Forssk.
  • Statice axillaris f. attenuata N.Terrac.
  • Statice axillaris var. attenuata (N.Terrac.) Fiori
  • Statice axillaris var. ellenbeckii Engl.
  • Statice axillaris var. glomerata (N.Terrac.) Fiori
  • Statice bovei Jaub. & Spach
  • Statice lanceolata Edgew.
  • Taxanthema attenuata R.Br.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.