Superblue is the first of our three cultivars to colour up each summer, and the one you can actually eat.
It does not tower. It sits low in rounded mounds of silvery grey-green foliage with the flower spikes gathered close above them, so a planted row reads as one continuous band of deep blue rather than a loose haze of stems. Next to Grosso later in the season, the difference in habit is obvious from across the field.
What Superblue actually is
Superblue is a cultivar of Lavandula angustifolia, the species usually called English lavender or true lavender.
One point worth being precise about: “true lavender” names the whole species, not this cultivar. Superblue is a modern selection within it, bred by Darwin Perennials for compact growth, rich blue flowers and densely packed spikes. In plant protection records it appears under the cultivar denomination ‘Balavurlu’ and it is covered by US Plant Patent 24,929. To everyone standing in the field it is just Superblue.
Small plant, concentrated colour
Breeder information describes Superblue as forming a rounded mound of roughly 25 to 30 centimetres high and wide. A four-year evaluation at the Chicago Botanic Garden found much the same thing, measuring plants at about 25 centimetres high and 38 centimetres across at the end of the trial.
That is small for a lavender. The flowers make up for it. The spikes are dense, with fewer visible gaps than most cultivars, so what you lose in height you get back as saturation. In the row, the blue looks almost solid.
Why this is the one you can eat
English lavender is low in camphor. Lavandins like Grosso are high in it. Camphor is what makes lavender smell powerfully of lavender, and it is also what makes lavender taste like soap.
That single compound is the entire difference between culinary lavender and craft lavender. It is why we grow Superblue in its own rows, cut it for the kitchen rather than for bouquets, and why our lavender tea tastes floral instead of medicinal.
Being low in camphor is not by itself a licence to eat any English lavender you find. Culinary lavender has to be correctly identified and then grown, harvested, handled and labelled for food from the beginning. Superblue is the cultivar we prepare that way.
If a lavender shortbread has ever tasted like a bar of soap, it was almost certainly made with the wrong cultivar, or steeped far too long. Both are fixable, and we wrote up how.
Sweet and honeyed
We describe Superblue’s scent as sweet, floral and gently honeyed. It is softer and rounder than Grosso’s sharp green edge.
As an angustifolia, it belongs to a species whose oil generally runs lower in camphor and 1,8-cineole than lavandin oil. Camphor is only one part of the picture though. Plenty of other natural compounds shape what you smell, and so do climate, soil, cutting time and distillation. Without cultivar-specific lab analysis it would be overstating things to hand our Superblue a fixed chemical profile. Sweet and honeyed is how it reads to us, standing at the row and at the still.
When it blooms
At our Richmond farm, Superblue usually flowers from mid-June to mid-August. It is the earliest of our three, and it brings the first real blue-purple to the fields each year.
By the time it is finishing, Melissa and Grosso are coming on, which is why the fields change height and colour as the summer goes rather than holding one look. Dates move with the weather, so check the bloom calendar before a visit, or see when lavender blooms in BC for the full season.
It wants full sun and soil that drains freely. Once established it handles dry weather well. Like the other English lavenders, what it does not handle is consistently wet ground.
What we make with it
Superblue is the whole of our culinary and pantry range: tea, edible flower buds, lavender sugar and syrup. Used with a light hand it gives shortbread, cake and syrup a floral note. Used heavily, or left sitting in hot water too long, it goes soapy fast.
We also harvest and steam-distil it separately for essential oil and hydrosol, and it goes into some of our body care. Of the three cultivars it is the one we suggest for skin that reacts easily.
One thing that does not follow from any of the above: because Superblue is our culinary cultivar does not mean its undiluted essential oil belongs on skin. Finished products are made to be used the way their own labels say, and an essential oil is a concentrate whichever cultivar it came from.
How it compares to our other two
- Superblue is English lavender, low in camphor, sweet and honeyed. The culinary one, and the gentlest on skin.
- Melissa is also English lavender, but with a citrus lift and a much smaller harvest. The bedtime one.
- Grosso is a lavandin. Bold, herbaceous, camphor-forward. Best for drying, for linen and for rooms, and not for the kitchen.
We distil all three separately so these differences survive as far as the bottle. Choosing between oil and hydrosol rather than between cultivars? That is answered here. For the wider family tree, see types of lavender.
From the field to the kitchen
Superblue is the cultivar that connects the two halves of the farm. It is the blue you see first in June, and it is what is in the tin of tea you take home from the Gift Shop in October.
When the cultivars overlap in the field, stop at each row in turn. Superblue sits low and smells sweet. That is the one that goes in the pot.