Lavender, encompassing species like Lavandula angustifolia, is recognized globally for its silvery-green foliage, iconic purple flower spikes, and distinctive aroma. This combination of color, texture, and fragrance makes it highly desirable in landscapes, but many other plants share one or more of these traits. The visual confusion stems from the fact that many of these lookalikes, including true lavender, belong to the large mint family, Lamiaceae. This family often features fragrant, gray-leaved members with spiky blooms. Identifying these common imposters requires a closer look at their specific growth habits and subtle botanical differences.
Lookalikes with Gray-Green Foliage
Some of the most convincing alternatives to lavender mimic its subdued foliage color, creating a similar soft, hazy effect in the garden. Russian Sage, now classified as Salvia yangii (formerly Perovskia atriplicifolia), is often mistaken for a large, airy lavender shrub. This plant features fine, silvery-white stems and deeply cut, gray-green leaves that contribute to its overall ethereal appearance. Its flowers are light lavender-blue and grow on long, multi-branched stems, creating a much more open and wispy bloom than the dense spikes of true lavender.
Another common lookalike is Catmint (Nepeta), which also presents with soft, gray-green foliage. Catmint typically grows in a low, mounding, and sprawling habit, contrasting with lavender’s more upright, woody structure. Its leaves are generally softer and slightly broader than lavender’s narrow, linear leaves. Catmint’s small, tubular flowers appear in dense, continuous clusters, offering a long bloom season that covers the plant in a purple-blue haze.
While both Russian Sage and Catmint share the silvery leaf color, a quick check of the stem provides a clue, as both belong to the mint family and possess the characteristic square stems. True lavender, also in the Lamiaceae family, also has square stems when new, but its overall form is more compact and woody than the sprawling Catmint or the towering Russian Sage. The primary difference from a distance remains the much airier flower structure of Russian Sage and the lower, softer mounding habit of Catmint.
Lookalikes with Distinct Flower Spikes
Other plants are frequently confused with lavender due to their striking purple color and the vertical, spiky arrangement of their flowers, even if their foliage is distinctly green. The ornamental Sages (Salvia genus) provide the greatest number of lavender-like flowers, with countless cultivars offering dense, upright spikes in shades of blue, violet, and purple. These Salvia species are valued for their strong vertical accent and long-lasting blooms, often surpassing lavender in bloom time.
The main visual distinction lies in the foliage. On many common ornamental Salvia varieties, the leaves are a rich, glossy, or deep green, rather than the matte, hoary gray of true lavender. Salvia leaves also tend to be larger, broader, and sometimes feature a more pronounced texture. The flowers are generally smaller and more densely packed on the terminal spikes than the whorled arrangement seen in many Lavandula species.
Agastache, commonly known as Hyssop or Hummingbird Mint, offers another example of a purple-flowered plant with spiky terminals that can be confused with lavender. Agastache species are tall, upright perennials that produce fuzzy, dense flower spikes in purple, blue, or even orange hues. Like Salvia, the leaves of Agastache are typically a bright or medium green and are often heart or lance-shaped, lacking the silvery pubescence that characterizes most true lavenders. The overall growth habit of these plants is generally more herbaceous and less shrub-like than lavender, forming a softer, less woody structure.
Key Features to Differentiate True Lavender
The most reliable way to confirm the identity of a plant is by using a definitive checklist of its unique botanical traits, starting with its scent. True lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) possesses a distinctive aroma characterized by sweet, floral, and sometimes subtly medicinal notes. When crushed, the leaves of most lookalikes, such as Russian Sage and Catmint, release a stronger, more camphoraceous, or purely menthol-like fragrance, which is noticeably sharper than lavender’s classic perfume.
Examining the leaves provides a second definitive identifier. True lavender leaves are consistently narrow, linear, and often slightly rolled at the edges, appearing almost needle-like. This linear shape contrasts with the broader, more heart-shaped leaves of Catmint or the ovate leaves of many ornamental Salvia varieties. The dense coating of fine, star-shaped hairs (trichomes) on lavender’s leaves gives them their distinctive gray color and matte texture.
The structure of the flower spike itself offers a clear distinction, particularly the arrangement of the tiny flowers. Lavender flowers are arranged in sparse, stacked clusters called whorls along the stem, often leaving visible gaps between the flower groups. Some species, like Spanish lavender (L. stoechas), feature showy, petal-like bracts at the top of the bloom, a feature generally absent in the denser, more uniform flower spikes of Salvia and Nepeta.