Botanical name: Clinopodium vulgare    Family: Lamiaceae (Mint family)
Synonyms: Calamintha vulgaris, Calamintha aegyptiaca, Thymus clinopodium

Wild Basil is a perennial herb with stems 1-2 ft, erect or rising up, simple or with few branches, with a retrorse white eglandular indumentum of varying density. Leaves are rather thin-textured, ovate, 2-3.5 x 1.2-2 cm, almost entire or crenulate-finely toothed, rounded at base, hairy, leaf-stalk up to 1.2 cm. Flowers are borne in densely spherical, well separated whorls in axils of upper leaves, up to 30-40-flowered. Flowers are rose to purple, 1.2-1.5 cm, soon falling offl tube scarcely protruding from sepal-tube. Sepal-tube is 7-10 mm, curved, green or purplish, with long spreading eglandular hairs, teeth of upper lip 2.5-3 mm, spiny, of lower lip 3-5 mm upwardly curved. Bracts are 5-10 mm, spiny-thread-like, fringed with hairs. Flower-stalks are erect-spreading, about 2 mm. Wild Basil is found Europe to Siberia and West Himalaya, at altitudes of 2500-3300 m. Flowering: March-July.

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The flower labeled Wild Basil is ...