Santolina chamaecyparissus (lavender cotton)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Santolina chamaecyparissus, photographed by Jens-Christian Svenning — fig. a Jens-Christian Svenning, CC BY 4.0 / 2014-07-14 / obs. 76751118

Santolina chamaecyparissus, photographed by Tim Johnson — fig. b Tim Johnson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 129799708

Santolina chamaecyparissus, photographed by Daniel Heras González — fig. c Daniel Heras González, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 111192841

Santolina chamaecyparissus, photographed by Alex Heyman — fig. d Alex Heyman, CC0 1.0 / obs. 31355244

Santolina chamaecyparissus, photographed by P Holroyd — fig. e P Holroyd, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 68299834

Santolina chamaecyparissus, photographed by Víctor Gómez — fig. f Víctor Gómez, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203614869

Santolina chamaecyparissus, photographed by Javier Eusamio — fig. h Javier Eusamio, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 153100786

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.

Native range 2 botanical countries

Native distribution of Santolina chamaecyparissus, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Italy	ITA	EUROPE
NW. Balkan Pen.	YUG

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.

Also published as 5 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.

Abrotanum foemina Garsault
Santolina chamaecyparissus f. chamaecyparissus
Santolina chamaecyparissus subsp. chamaecyparissus
Santolina chamaecyparissus var. chamaecyparissus
Santolina marchii Arrigoni

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.