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Rosmarinus officinalis 'Lockwood de Forest' (Prostrate Rosemary) – An evergreen prostrate shrub that grows as a dense carpet to about 1 foot tall and spreads to 6-8 feet, cascading over walls or garden edges. The bright green foliage is covered during the spring bloom of pale blue flowers with often its strongest flowering display in winter with sporadic bloom through fall.
Plant in full sun. As with other Rosemary it is resistant to deer and rabbit predation, tolerant to salt spray, alkaline soils and drought. Hardy to 15°F. An attractive and very useful drought tolerant groundcover.
This variety is known as Santa Barbara Rosemary as it was discovered here in the Santa Barbara garden of Lockwood and Elizabeth de Forest. The de Forest's speculated that the plant was a spontaneous hybrid between an upright plant that was planted in their garden in 1927 and a prostrate rosemary that was planted in the 1930's. Elizabeth de Forest, in an article for Pacific Horticulture in 1976, described the pale blue color as "the color of the old French air force uniform". She mentions in this article that it became the most common of prostrate Rosemary cultivars in Santa Barbara. We have grown this plant since 1982 from cuttings taken of it from plants growing in the de Forest garden.
Rosemary is native to the dry, rocky areas surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. The name for the genus comes from the Latin name first published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 for this aromatic shrub means sea dew, derived from the Latin words 'ros' meaning "dew" and 'marinus' meaning of the sea." The specific epithet is the Latin word that signifies a plant sold as a medicinal herb.
Recent DNA analysis now shows the genus Rosmarinus to be fit squarely into the massive Salvia genus, which already has about 1,000 species. Since the specific epithet "officinalis" is already used in the genus Salvia, the new name for our common rosemary is now officially Salvia rosmarinus. Joining Rosmarinus in this move to Salvia is Perovskia and the little know genera Dorystaechas, Meriandra and Zhumeria. This change was published in an article by University of Nebraska biologist Bryan T. Drew, Jesús González-Gallegos, Chun-Lei Xiang, Ricardo Kriebel, Chloe Drummond, Jay Walker and Kenneth Sytsma titled "Salvia united: The greatest good for the greatest number" in the February 2017 issue of Taxon 66(1):133-145. For the sake of our customers and ourselves, we continue to list the Rosemary in the genus Rosmarinus!
This information about Rosmarinus officinalis 'Lockwood de Forest' displayed is based on research conducted in our horticultural library and from reliable online resources. We also will relate observations made about it as it grows in our nursery gardens and other gardens we have visited, as well how the crops have performed in containers in our nursery field. We will also incorporate comments that we receive from others and we welcome hearing from anyone with additional information, particularly if they can share any cultural information that would aid others in growing it.
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