Small to medium perennial with paired straw-coloured, yellow-green flowers on one-sided leafless branched spikes. From July to September, it has small, one-lipped flowers with maroon coloured, protruding anthers in a hairy corolla and heart-shaped, wrinkled, downy leaves. The stem is reddish and square. It grows usually on acid soil and is found in dry places, woodland, hills and mountainsides but is hard to find in the centre of the country. This is a native plant and belongs to the family Lamiaceae.
I first identified this flower on Killiney Hill, Co Dublin in 1973 and photographed it in the Burren in 1995 and 2007.
If you are satisfied you have correctly identified this plant, please submit your sighting to the National Biodiversity Data Centre
