Linaria purpurea

 A herb garden at Humboldt fort

Today we took a walk in Humboldt old historical fort, a sort of museum where one can see artifacts from the lumber days of Humboldt county. There were also places where army barracks and officers quarters used to be (some still are). One of these places had a small garden attached to it. 

The thing about this garden is that it had more interesting plants than so-called botanical garden at the local community college. Just shows you that size does not matter.

There were many cool plants in this garden, many of them medicinal rather than culinary, which is understandable, considering it was attached to surgeon's quarters. Anyway, we'll have to begin with something. So we'll start with Linaria purpurea, commonly known as toadflax, perhaps the most showy plant in this garden.

Linaria purpurea with purple flowers

Linaria belongs to the plantain  family of plants (Plantaginaceae), a very diverse family, though formerly it was classified  as part of figwort family (Scrophulariaceae). Plants of this family make nice decorative plants in the gardens.

 Linaria flowers close-up

Linaria purpurea is a relative of snapdragon and you can see some family resemblance. The flowers can be purple, pink or white.

 Linarea purpurea plant

The leaves are narrow and oblong.  The stem is woody. The most common variety of toadflax is Linaria vulgaris, more commonly known as butter-and-eggs. The flowers look similar to Linaria purpurea but yellow in the middle surrounded by white top and bottom. I have never seen that plant in the wild yet.

Linaria means resembling Linum (flax). I don't see any connection, at least with a common flax. Here is the picture of the flax flower for you to compare:

Flax flower

They look like identical twins, don't they?