Natives For Your Neighborhood
Conservation of rare plants, animals, and ecosystems

General Landscape Uses: Primarily recommended for natural landscapes and habitat restorations. It can also be used as a groundcover in water gardens and along pond and lake edges.

Ecological Restoration Notes: A relatively common element of a wide variety of freshwater wetlands.

Availability: Grown by a few native plant nurseries.

Description: Small creeping wildflower. Leaves aromatic when crushed.

Dimensions: Typically 3-6 inches in height or less. Spreading and forming large patches.

Growth Rate: Moderate.

Range: Southeastern United States west to Texas and south to Miami-Dade County and the Monroe County mainland.

 Map of select IRC data from peninsular Florida.

 Map of Postal Code Areas of IRC data from peninsular Florida.

Habitats: Freshwater marshes, swamps and pond margins.

Soils: Wet to moist, seasonally inundated organic, sandy or calcareous soils, with or without humusy top layer.

Nutritional Requirements: Moderate to low; it prefers soils with organic content, but will still grow reasonably well in nutrient poor soils.

Salt Water Tolerance: Low; does not tolerate flooding by salt or brackish water.

Salt Wind Tolerance: Low; salt wind may burn the leaves.

Drought Tolerance: Low; requires moist to wet soils and is intolerant of long periods of drought.

Light Requirements: Full sun.

Flower Color: Blue.

Flower Characteristics: Showy. Fragrant.

Flowering Season: All year.

Fruit: Inconspicuous capsule.

Horticultural Notes: Can be grown from cuttings and division.

Comments: The leaves are lemon-scented. See also the Florida Wildflower Foundation's Flower Friday page.