My garden, as I’ve said many times, is a 50-by-120-foot suburban lot with the usual house, driveway, garage and paved walks. Among those elements are half a dozen beds or borders containing combinations of shrubs, perennials, and self-sown annuals. There are also small areas of grass (sometimes called “the lawns,” although that sounds rather grand).
The soil is a light sandy loam, with good drainage. The climate is semi-Mediterranean, which means mild wet winters and dry summers. Recent summers have been drier and warmer than normal. Most of the plantings are affected to some extent by four large Norway maples, a big birch and a medium-sized Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima).
In this difficult situation — dry, rooty shade — a few reliable tough plants perform quite well, because they are tough and almost weedy. Properly managed, they can be quite ornamental. I plan to write several posts this summer about how I use these plants in my garden.
First up is Purple Toadflax (Linaria purpurea). Apparently, the leaves resemble those of the flax plant, which explains the “flax” part of the common name and the “lin” (linum is Latin for “flax”) in the genus name. I’m not sure where the toad comes in.
The plant grows between 1 and 3 feet (30 cm to 1 metre) tall. In shade, it can reach 4 feet. It’s somewhat slender, so inserts itself easily among other plants without crowding. Most plants have between 4 and 10 stems. The stems are stiff and never need staking.
The individual flowers are like tiny snapdragons. They cluster in spiky racemes at the tops of the stems. The standard colour is medium to dark purple. I’ve had a few plants whose flowers are purple and white, but they’re rare. Pink flowers are more common than the bicolours. They’re a fairly pale pink, though; their main interest comes from being different from the norm. The standard purple is a fine colour, contrasting well with the grey-blue-green of the slender leaves.
Purple toadflax is of no interest to deer. It grows well and blooms reliably in dry, rooty soil and shade. It thrives in sunny spots. Bumblebees love it.
What’s not to like? Well, I did say it’s a quasi-weed. Left to its own devices, it blooms in May and June. The flowers are succeeded by seed pods that look like tiny green beads. At this point flowering stops. Seeds ripen by summer’s end and scatter when the plants are disturbed. The following spring hundreds of seedlings emerge, producing more toadflaxes than anyone wants. An untended patch of toadflax is reminiscent of gravel parking lots, not garden borders.
Rigorous deadheading is the way to curb the plant’s weedy tendencies. Clip off the spikes of bead-like seed pods as soon as they form. You can either cut each thin side-stem or wait until the whole raceme has pretty much finished flowering and cut the main stem just beneath the flower cluster. The plant will put out new flowering side-stems and keep blooming all summer. A bonus of this process is that the foliage of plants growing in sunny spots turns interesting shades of pink in autumn.
The trick is to deadhead before the seeds ripen. Inevitably, a few plants escape my notice. I discover them when I’m doing fall cleanup, by which time the tiny seeds scatter far and wide. A desperation measure for this situation is to carefully clip the seed-bearing top of each stem and transfer it into a pail or similar container, preventing seed scatter. I suspect semi-ripened seeds are able to finish maturing in the compost pile, so it’s best not to compost them unless you’re sure your heap achieves temperatures high enough to kill seeds. Mine doesn’t.
This is why I know how well toadflax blends into plantings. I don’t remember ever actually planting it. I go through the beds in spring and remove excessive seedlings and badly-positioned plants.
Toadflax is a short-lived perennial. Individual plants persist for two or three seasons. Eventually, they get woody at the base and perform poorly. By that time, though, there are more than enough young plants to replace them.
I wouldn’t recommend purple toadflax for mass plantings. The skinny, diagonally placed leaves produce a visually tedious herringbone tweed effect. Besides, this mass planting effect is what you get when you let toadflax self-sow with abandon. I like them best among other plants with contrasting leaf shapes.
More info about Purple Toadflax is available at the Missouri Botanical Garden site and Wikipedia.
Audrey Driscoll's Blog 
That is very interesting as it looks just like the flower I have never been sure of the name of. It has followed us through several homes from Heathrow to Bournemouth, self seeding and popping up to fill in gaps or bring height. If a clump gets unweildy I pull it up, it will soon be replaced. The bees love it.
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It is an independent sort of plant.
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Your plant knowledge is impressive. Purple toadflax doesn’t grow wild around here (yet).
I am a quarter of the way into The Treasure and thoroughly enjoying it!
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Good to hear you’re enjoying The Treasure! Thanks for letting me know.
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Very interesting. I think I saw that plant when I was in exile in San Diego. Thanks for sharing.
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You’re welcome, Pat.
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I love how you’ve kept and managed what many would consider a weed. The Purple Toadflax in your garden look very pretty.
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Thank you! I’ve come to appreciate tough, weedy plants that do well in my garden, rather than struggling with those that aren’t suited for the conditions.
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reminds me wing-angled purple loose strife,but it’s an invasive plant.
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Yes! And purple loosestrife grows in wet places. They do look alike, though.
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It’s beautiful. Yellow toadflax grows wild around here. It’s smaller–much–but still beautiful, and the name always makes me laugh.
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I never thought about that name — what might those toads have been up to?
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I can’t help imagining them with teeny tiny spinning wheels.
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😃
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I keep this plant because buckeye caterpillar seem to love it. It’s always full of them in late summer and fall.
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That’s interesting, Hugo. I had never heard of buckeye caterpillars. It seems they’re not found on Vancouver Island or the Pacific NW. Good to know the toadflax is useful that way. Thanks for your comment.
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I like purple flowers in a garden, so you got me at purple. and it’s an intriguing name! (Then again, so many common names of plants are intriguing and I often wish I knew their origins.) Interesting post — thank you.
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Thanks, Cynthia, and you’re welcome. The individual flowers are tiny, but a plant with lots of stalks can produce a lot of them at once, so you get a satisfying blob of purple.
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One of these plants suddenly appeared in my little border last year2019. I say little border because I live in a local authority bungalow and the gardens are supposed to be open plan ground. The plant grew lovely and attracted lots of bees. I cut it right down in winter. This year that one grew really well with lots of stems and loads of flowers, two more plants grew too so I presume they self seed.. ???
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Yes, they seed quite copiously. I make sure to deadhead when I see the little green bead-like seed pods forming. You can either cut the main stems shorter or clip the individual bloom stalks. Deadheading extends the blooming season and limits self-seeding, so it’s worth doing. I think the plant is a short-lived perennial, especially in heavier soils, so if you like it, some volunteer seedlings may be welcome. Thanks for your comment, Christine!
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Hurrah for any plant that bees love. They need all the help they can get these days. A lovely and informative blog post about the marvelously/oddly named Purple Toadflax.
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Another gardener I know calls it “the bumblebee plant.” It’s true–I’ve seen lots of small bumblebees frequenting my plants. I’m always happy to see bees in my garden. And comments on my posts too–thanks for this one!
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I love toadflax. But I never knew I could dead head them to make it bloom again. Thanks very much for the advice. My bees will appreciate it tremendously. Here in Britain all bees love toadflax. Not sure where you are sorry.
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If you snip off the bits with seed pods forming, the plants bloom all summer. They’re a favourite of bees here too. Victoria B.C.
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