Plant · P-659

Dittany Of Crete

Origanum dictamnus

This grey-woolly aromatic sub-shrub is grown mostly for the herbal tea made from its dried flowering tops, sold as Cretan tea, and its leaves add a milder, oregano-like flavor to salads and vermouth. In the wild it grows only on cliffs and rock crevices on the island of Crete, and winter wet rather than cold is what kills it - it needs sharp drainage and struggles anywhere humid. Wild plants are protected and increasingly rare, but nursery-grown stock is cheap and common, so buying a cultivated plant takes pressure off the wild population instead of adding to it. It also resists root-knot nematodes completely, producing no galls even where a tomato planted alongside it would be overrun.