A bit of
botany

Lavender belongs to the genus of about 25–30 species of flowering plants in the mint family, Lamiaceae, which also includes thyme, savoury, oregano, mint and sage.

Flowers grow at the top of stems above the foliage of the plant. The corolla, which consists of five petals, forms a tube and is inserted in a calyx that is itself fused into five sepals.

The flower has four stamens (the male part of the flower) as well as the style, the elongated part, and the anther, the swollen portion containing the pollen. The pistil (the female part of the flower) encloses four dry seeds called carpels. The style shared by the four carpels opens at its top with two stigma ready to receive pollen at fertilization.

True Lavender
or a hybrid?

Compared with True Lavender (Lavandula vera, Lavandula officinalis or Lavandula angustifolia), Lavandula hybrida is a hybrid plant that can produce ten times the amount of essential oil. But this extra volume is its only benefit, as the oil extracted is of far poorer quality. It is used for industrial purposes only, to perfume detergents and soaps.

Hybrid oil has none of the medicinal properties of essential oil extracted from True Lavender, and cannot be used for cooking.

 The blue-eyed fairy

The fantastic stories we love are passed down through storytelling. The legend of Lavandula has a particular significance for the staff at Bleu Lavande.

It is said that the blonde and blue-eyed fairy Lavandula was born among the wild lavenders on the mountainsides of Lure. One day, browsing through her book of landscapes to find a new place to live, she stumbled upon its page for Provence – and abruptly stopped. Seeing the barren, uncultivated fields of Provence in her book made her weep with sadness, and her hot, lavender-coloured tears fell onto the open page and coloured the page blue. Not knowing what to do, she covered the vast skies of Provence with a beautiful blue to hide all traces of her tears.

Since that day, lavender has grown on those lands, and the blonde young women of the region have lavender sparkles in their eyes, especially when they look up at the metallic afternoon sky over the fields of flowering lavender.

Surely the lovely Lavandula must have wept over the fields of Bleu Lavande as well, because our lavender is the same unmatchable, unmistakable shade of blue.