Verbascum splendidum

The day one time SBS garden presenter Costa visited Lambley the temperature hit 44C. One plant which astonished him and which his crew filmed was this Verbascum. A Turkish endemic, in its first year V. splendidum makes an enormous silver-white rosette, some 150cm across. The next season it produces a thick, 2 metre tall, branching trunk, with silver-white leaves clasping it, and a profusion of soft lemon flowers for months and months. Exhausted by the effort it dies after setting seed.