Linum

Very lovely little flowers, planted as green manure or as perennials:

Linum usitatissimum

Sown in the fall of 2022 as green manure it covered wide swathes in the garden in dainty blue flowers during May of 2023. Very pretty but not very long-lasting which is why I switched to other kinds of Linum:

Linum perenne

Linum perenne is not a Mediterranean native but so far it has worked out in this garden because it demands dry soil and tolerates heat surprisingly well. I sowed it in the fall of 2024 and it came up well, flowering from the end of April through June and again later in the summer, staying tall and green well into August. It reseeded itself with many new plants coming up and even flowering in early fall.

Linum rubrum grandiflorum

Linum rubrum is an annual. I sowed it together with L. perenne in the fall of 2024. It also came up well and flowered from the beginning of April through May. Its plants tolerated the heat less well than L. perenne, disappearing with the great summer heat. Which is actually a bit strange, because the plant is a native of Algeria. But anyway, the flowers are so very pretty that I sowed it again this October.