40 Fun Facts About Lavender

Lavender, long used to scent baths and linen, is traditionally traced to Latin lavare, meaning what?

To wash is the usual explanation, since the plant perfumed baths and laundry, though some dictionaries suggest the name began with a Latin word for bluish.

Which region of southern France draws tourists each flowering season to lavender centres such as Sault and Valensole?

Provence celebrates the crop every 15 August in Sault, where a festival stages France's championship for cutting lavender by sickle.

In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which classmate does Lavender Brown date, to Hermione's fury?

Ron Weasley starts dating Lavender to spite Hermione, who lashes out at him in return.

In Pokémon Red and Blue, Lavender Town's Pokémon Tower is the only place to catch which type of Pokémon?

Ghost-type Pokémon live among the graves, and the town's eerie background music later inspired an internet urban legend.

Dried lavender buds grow more potent than fresh ones, so overdoing them gives food which unpleasant aftertaste?

Soapy is the cook's warning, so a recipe written for fresh lavender needs only about a third as much of the dried buds.

Taylor Swift found the title phrase of her hit 'Lavender Haze' while watching which American period drama series?

Mad Men used the phrase for the glow of being in love, and Swift was intrigued to learn it supposedly dated from the 1950s.

English lavender is not native to England, so which region is the true home of the plant?

The Mediterranean basin is its true home, yet English lavender stands up to frost far better than its more tender Spanish cousin.

Sachets of dried lavender are tucked among stored clothes to add fragrance and to deter which insects?

Moths are the target, and the same dried flowers are tossed as wedding confetti and stirred into potpourri.

In the Ealing comedy The Lavender Hill Mob, stolen gold is smuggled abroad as souvenir paperweights of which landmark?

The Eiffel Tower paperweights lead to a dizzying chase down the real landmark's spiral staircase, and the film won an Oscar for its screenplay.

In Roald Dahl's Matilda, which creature does Matilda's friend Lavender slip into Miss Trunchbull's water jug?

A newt it is, and when Matilda gets the blame, her anger reveals an unexpected power: she tips the glass onto Trunchbull by telekinesis.

Lavender belongs to which plant family, known for square stems and kitchen herbs such as basil and rosemary?

Mint relatives fill the herb garden: thyme, oregano, marjoram and catnip are all cousins of lavender.

Which fellow dame plays Judi Dench's sister in Ladies in Lavender, set in a Cornish fishing village in 1936?

Maggie Smith and Dench were appearing together in a West End play when they were first approached, and both earned European Film Award nominations.

Lily James sings the old nursery rhyme 'Lavender's Blue' in which 2015 Disney live-action remake?

Cinderella revived a song whose earliest surviving version, an English broadside of the 1670s, is far bawdier than the nursery favourite.

Lavender, rosemary and garlic steeped in vinegar made the 'four thieves' remedy, believed to ward off which disease?

The plague remedy is named for thieves who, in the usual telling, robbed the sick unharmed and traded their recipe for leniency when caught.

Which process, which bursts the tiny oil pockets in the cut flowers, is used to extract pure lavender essential oil?

Steam distillation carries the oil off as vapour, which condenses on a cold pipe and then separates from the water in a holding tank.

Which group of US government employees was purged in the 1950s 'Lavender Scare', alongside the hunt for communists?

Gay men and lesbians were hunted so widely that the campaign persecuted more alleged homosexuals than alleged communists.

Which US state is home to Sequim, the Olympic Peninsula city nicknamed the Lavender Capital of North America?

Washington's Sequim lies in a mountain rain shadow and gets about as little rain as Los Angeles, which suits the sun-loving crop.

Farm Tomita, a much-visited flower farm renowned for its expansive lavender fields, lies on which Japanese island?

Hokkaido's Furano area is known across Japan for lavender, and even its bus line to the city of Asahikawa is named Lavender.

Which term, now closely tied to lavender oil, first appeared in print in a 1937 book by chemist René-Maurice Gattefossé?

Aromatherapy began as the French title of his book, which billed essential oils as plant hormones.

Which Ealing Studios star earned his first Best Actor Oscar nomination as the bank clerk in The Lavender Hill Mob?

Alec Guinness plays Holland, a seemingly unambitious man who has spent twenty years in charge of bullion deliveries before deciding to steal one.

Which 18th-century botanist merged two long-separate plant groups into the single lavender genus Lavandula?

Carl Linnaeus recognised only five species when he published the genus in 1753, where botanists now list dozens.

Bridestowe, believed to be the world's largest commercial farm of English lavender, lies in which Australian state?

Tasmania's Bridestowe estate was founded in 1922, and its owner named it after the English town where his wife was born.

Which Balkan country, long famous for rose oil, overtook France in the early 2010s as the top producer of lavender oil?

Bulgaria grows the crop in its Rose Valley near Kazanlak, where a 2014 report found workers treading the picked blossoms down by foot.

Which London perfume house, founded in 1770, made English Lavender its signature scent in the Victorian era?

Yardley launched English Lavender in 1873 and exported it to the United States in the 1880s, where it became popular in American households.

The Lavender Pit near Bisbee, Arizona, named after mining executive Harrison Lavender, was dug to extract which metal?

Copper came out of the pit until 1974, along with enough fine turquoise to make 'Bisbee Blue' a prized gemstone.

In Lavandula angustifolia, the botanical name of English lavender, the second word describes which feature of the plant?

Narrow leaves gave the species its name, while its older label, officinalis, pointed instead to the plant's use as a medicine.

Which French Riviera town, whose scents include lavender, jasmine and rose, is known as the world's perfume capital?

Grasse began as a leather-tanning town and took up perfume because the nobility disliked the foul smell of its gloves.

Which lavender lookalike from the steppes of central Asia carries a misleading name, since it is not native to Russia?

Russian sage resembles a much larger lavender, and its crushed foliage is said to smell like a blend of the two herbs.

Which Game of Thrones actor wrote the screenplay for Ladies in Lavender and made it his debut as a film director?

Charles Dance, later the screen's Tywin Lannister, said the film would not have happened without his two leading ladies.

Fougère perfumes, which blend lavender with oakmoss and coumarin, take their name from the French word for which plant?

Fern is the meaning of fougère, and the family began with Houbigant's Fougère Royale of 1882, a style now especially popular in fragrances for men.

Before turpentine became common, artists working in oil paint used as a solvent the oil of which type of lavender?

Spike lavender oil is a product apart from ordinary lavender oil: it is denser and comes from a different species, Lavandula latifolia.

The showy purple tufts that crown a Spanish lavender flower head are not petals but which sterile, leaf-like structures?

Bracts up to five centimetres long give the plant its other name, topped lavender, and no flowers grow between them.

Which British prime minister's 1976 resignation honours became known satirically as the 'Lavender List'?

Harold Wilson's list earned the nickname from a claim, which he denied, that an aide had drafted it on lavender-coloured notepaper.

Monks of which order grow lavender and keep honey bees for their living at Sénanque Abbey in southern France?

Cistercians founded the abbey in 1148, and it is counted with two other early houses of the order as one of the 'Three Sisters'.

Sea lavender, a group of plants unrelated to true lavender or rosemary, is generally known to gardeners by which name?

Statice belongs to the leadwort family, and its other common name, marsh-rosemary, is just as misleading.

Which hybrid, also called Dutch lavender, is widely farmed for oil because its flowers are bigger and easier to harvest?

Lavandin oil carries more camphor than English lavender oil, giving a sharper scent that some regard as lower in quality.

Which south London district, once famed for lavender fields, has lavender on its council arms and football club badge?

Mitcham shares its football club with Tooting, and its flower fields once gave it a name for soothing air that drew the gentry.

Gardeners are warned never to prune lavender back into which part of the plant, because it rarely reshoots from there?

Old wood seldom sprouts again, so the advice is a light trim every year in late summer, just after flowering has finished.

Which British band followed the hit 'Kayleigh' with 'Lavender', a 1985 UK top five single recalling childhood innocence?

Marillion built the song around echoes of an old folk rhyme and took it to number five, their second top five hit in a row.

Which folk singer, later the voice of Sam the Snowman, introduced 'Lavender Blue' in Disney's So Dear to My Heart?

Burl Ives made the song his first hit, and it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.