Lavender names are a mess. English lavender is not from England. French lavender and Spanish lavender are frequently the same plant. The lavender in every photograph of Provence is usually not the lavender sold as Provence. And most of what is labelled simply “lavender” in a shop could be any of about four quite different plants.
We grow three cultivars across two of those groups on our farm in Richmond, British Columbia, and the differences matter enough that we distil each one separately. Here is how the naming actually works.
The short version
There are around 47 lavender species. For anyone buying lavender rather than collecting it, four groups matter:
| Group | Botanical name | Camphor | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| English lavender | Lavandula angustifolia | Low | Food, skin, fine oil |
| Lavandin | Lavandula × intermedia | High | Drying, linen, cleaning, volume oil |
| Spike lavender | Lavandula latifolia | Very high | Industrial use, rarely sold retail |
| Spanish / French lavender | Lavandula stoechas | High | The garden. Not oil, not food. |
If you remember one thing: camphor is the axis everything turns on. It is the compound that makes lavender smell powerfully of lavender, and it is also what makes lavender taste like soap. Low camphor for eating and for skin. High camphor for drawers and for rooms.
English lavender (Lavandula angustifolia)
Also sold as true lavender or common lavender. It is not English in origin — it is Mediterranean, and it got the name because it grows well in an English garden and became associated with English perfumery.
Shorter than the others, with narrow leaves and compact flower spikes. It flowers earlier. It yields considerably less oil per plant, and that oil is worth more, because it is low in camphor and high in the sweet floral compounds people actually want.
This is the only group you should be eating. Culinary lavender means angustifolia, full stop. It is also the group that suits skin best.
Common cultivars: Hidcote, Munstead, Royal Velvet, and our two — Superblue, which we grow for the kitchen, and Melissa, a pink-flowering cultivar with a citrus lift.
It is also the hardiest group. In a Canadian garden, this is the one with a realistic chance of surviving the winter.
Lavandin (Lavandula × intermedia)
A hybrid: English lavender crossed with spike lavender. It inherits the size and yield of the spike parent and roughly the scent direction of the English one, plus a good deal more camphor than either buyer expects.
Lavandins are tall, with long stems and big flower heads, and they flower later. They produce several times the oil per hectare that true lavender does, which is why they dominate commercial planting.
Here is the part most guides leave out: the endless purple rows in every photograph of Provence are, overwhelmingly, lavandin. True lavender fields are smaller, patchier and higher up the hillside. The image people have of lavender is an image of a hybrid.
Common cultivars: Grosso, Provence, Phenomenal. Grosso is the most widely planted lavandin in the world, and it is the one we cut for drying — long stems, and a camphor content that keeps a sachet working a year later.
Do not cook with it. It is not harmful, it just tastes medicinal.
Spike lavender (Lavandula latifolia)
The other parent of lavandin, and the one you will rarely meet on its own. Very high in camphor and 1,8-cineole — sharp, almost eucalyptus-like, more of a cleaning smell than a floral one.
It is used industrially and occasionally in aromatherapy blends where that bite is the point. It is not what anyone means when they say they like the smell of lavender.
Spanish lavender (Lavandula stoechas) — also sold as French
The distinctive one: a dense, dark flower head topped with two upright petal-like bracts that everyone calls rabbit ears. Once you have seen it, you cannot mistake it.
It is sold as Spanish lavender and French lavender more or less interchangeably, which is the single biggest source of confusion in lavender naming. Some nurseries also apply “French lavender” to Lavandula dentata, the toothed-leaf one, and some apply it to lavandin. The term is close to meaningless without a botanical name attached.
It flowers early and long, which makes it a good garden plant. It is high in camphor and is not used for fine oil or for food. It is also tender — it will not survive a winter that angustifolia shrugs off.
If you are shopping for oil and see “French lavender”, ask what the botanical name is. It could be a fine angustifolia, a lavandin, or a stoechas that has no business being in an oil bottle.
How to tell them apart without a label
- Rabbit ears on top of the flower head → stoechas (Spanish/French).
- Tall, long bare stems, big heads, flowering late → lavandin.
- Short, compact, flowering early, narrow grey-green leaves → English lavender.
- Smells sharp and camphorous rather than sweet → lavandin or spike, not English.
In a shop, the honest shortcut is price and labelling: if a seller does not tell you the species, assume lavandin. It is the cheaper crop, and nobody growing true lavender stays quiet about it.
Which one you want, by what you are doing
- Baking, tea, cooking → English lavender only. Ours is Superblue, and there is a brewing guide here.
- On skin, daily → English lavender, and preferably as a hydrosol rather than an oil, so dilution stops being your problem.
- Sachets, bouquets, linen, moths → lavandin. It holds its scent far longer once dried.
- A diffuser → either. Depends whether you want sweet or bracing.
- A garden in a cold climate → English lavender. It is the hardy one.
- A garden somewhere mild, for the look → Spanish lavender flowers longest and is the most distinctive.
What we grow, and why three
Two English lavenders and one lavandin, distilled separately rather than blended:
- Superblue (L. angustifolia) — sweet, honeyed, low camphor. Everything culinary comes off this row.
- Melissa (L. angustifolia) — pink-flowering, floral with a citrus lift, and our smallest harvest by a distance.
- Grosso (L. × intermedia) — the lavandin. Bold and herbaceous, and what we cut for drying.
Blending them would produce a perfectly nice generic lavender and waste the reason for growing three. You can compare all three directly in the 5 ml essential oil or the 100 ml hydrosol — both come in each cultivar.
And if the question underneath all of this was really oil versus hydrosol rather than cultivar versus cultivar, that one is answered here.