Lippia alba (Mill.) N.E. Br. ex Britton & P. Wilson, 1925.

Verloove, Filip, 2021, New records in vascular plants alien to Tenerife (Spain, Canary Islands), Biodiversity Data Journal 9, pp. 62878-62878 : 62878

Lippia alba (Mill.) N.E. Br. ex Britton & P. Wilson, 1925.

Lippia alba Bot. Porto Rico 6(1): 141. 1925.

Distribution

TENERIFE: Guía de Isora, Playa de San Juan, SE of the village, shallow, dry barranco, a single shrub, relic of former plantation (?), 14.01.2019, F. Verloove 13438 (BR); Santa Cruz de Tenerife, San Andrés, Barranco de San Andrés, dry gravelly riverbed, two young shrubs, self-sown, 22.12.2019, F. Verloove 13738 (BR).https://observation.org/observation/205285935/; https://observation.org/observation/205286074/

Notes

Lippia alba is native to southern Texas (U.S.A.), Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America and South America. It is widely cultivated as an ornamental or for its aromatic foliage. In places where it was formerly introduced, it relatively easily naturalises, for instance, in Australia ( Munir 1993). In Europe, it was recently reported for the first time from a single locality in Portugal ( Verloove and Alves 2016).

In 2019, this species was recorded in two localities in Tenerife. In Playa de San Juan, a single shrub grows in a very shallow, dried-out ravine. It may be a mere relic of former cultivation there. In a second locality, in San Andrés, however, two young, obviously self-sown shrubs were found growing on the gravel of the dry riverbed (Fig. 6 ).

Figures

Figure 6. Lippia alba, Santa Cruz de Tenerife (San Andres), December 2019.