Sideritis incana

Sideritis incana, the silver shepherd's tea or silver ironwort, is a small perennial subshrub of the Lamiaceae endemic to the limestone mountains of south-eastern and central Spain, often growing on dry stony slopes and rocky outcrops between 500 and 2000 m elevation. Plants form low, woody-based cushions or tufts 15-40 cm tall, the whole vegetative body densely clothed in long, soft, white-woolly hairs that give the species its distinctive silvery-grey appearance and its epithet incana. Stems are erect or ascending, square in cross-section as is characteristic of the mint family, and bear opposite, oblong-lanceolate to ovate leaves 1-4 cm long with crenate margins. The flowering spike is terminal and elongated, formed by widely spaced verticillasters subtended by leaf-like bracts that turn purplish or rosy with age. Each verticillaster bears 4-10 small two-lipped flowers with a pale yellow corolla scarcely exceeding the woolly tubular calyx. The species is one of several Iberian Sideritis spp. used since antiquity as the basis for Spanish "té de monte" or shepherd's tea infusions.