True lavender and lavandin

Not every purple field in Provence is “true” lavender. On the plateaus two plants are grown that look alike, but distillers never mix them up.

True lavender

True lavender, also called fine or English lavender (Lavandula angustifolia), grows wild on the dry, sunny slopes of the mountains of southern France. It likes altitude: it is grown on high plateaus such as Sault or the Albion plateau. Its tufts are small, its spikes short, and its scent soft and floral.

Its essential oil is rare and sought after. Oil produced in the defined areas of Haute-Provence carries a protected designation of origin (PDO), which governs where the plants come from and how they are distilled.

Lavandin

Lavandin is a natural hybrid of true lavender and spike lavender (Lavandula latifolia). It is sterile, so it is propagated from cuttings. Its tufts are bigger and rounder, its spikes longer, often with two side spikes on the stem. It grows much lower down and yields far more essential oil, with a more camphorous scent. It covers most of the big fields people photograph, notably on the Valensole plateau.

	True lavender	Lavandin
Plant	wild species	sterile hybrid
Propagation	seed or cuttings	cuttings
Tuft	small, short spikes	large, long spikes
Scent	soft, floral	more camphorous
Oil yield	low	high

Bloom, harvest and distilling

Depending on altitude and the year, flowering runs from mid-June to late July. The harvest follows in July and August. The cut stems are packed into the vat of a still, through which steam is passed. The steam carries the essential oil away; cooled in a coil, it turns back into liquid, and the oil, lighter than water, separates on the surface of the essencier. The scented water left behind is floral water, or hydrosol.

15 August in Sault

Sault, which readily calls itself lavender country, holds a lavender festival every year on 15 August, with a market, a parade and demonstrations of cutting with a sickle. By then the rows have often already been harvested: the festival celebrates the end of the season more than the bloom.