Clary sage is unique, instantly recognizable:
The usual rough and somewhat disorganized basal leaves get it together by their second Spring, with an almost "Audrey II"-like bud, surveying the world before The Big Chomp...
....that (instead, whew) matures to a superb architectural candelabra almost three feet tall, of hundreds of pale pink-lavender flowers....
....each perched like the Alice In Wonderland caterpillar, on its own immaculate and comfy bract.
The one plant is a cast of characters, or at least what theater-folk call a "two-hander." It's a big show, and for a couple of months too. So what if the whole plant croaks afterwards; you'd be pooped after such a performance too. Seedlings appear reliably but not ad infinitum. (At least for me.) Clary sage is with you forever, and only in numbers you actually want. In short, heaven. Except, well, that color. Or rather, colors:
The bract hints at pink with the blue, whereas the bottom petal of the flower astrid it is (now that I look at the picture myself) white, with the top "Who are you?" caterpillar part a pale but pure blue. All interesting, but I wish it were in the Pink Borders with all of its pink-friendly brethren.  Instead, it's happily seeding between granite slabs in the Terrace, surrounded by yellows or even reds.  Drat.
Next Spring—and in this climate, salvia is definitely a Spring-transplant only—I need to moved some to the Pink Borders, and then rip out the rest. No, not because I don't want any Clary Sage near the Terrace. Because there's an all-white variety to plant, and I wouldn't want it to have sexual congress (via pollinating bees of course) with the pink & blue variety and, hence, have offspring that have, so to speak, lost their pure-white virginity.
It's all too appropriate, now that we're beswamped in this complexly unsavory sexual metaphor, that the all-white version is called, without irony let alone apology, Vatican White.
Talk about a "cast of characters."
Whatever. You can get Vatican White, as will I, at Digging Dog.  Hmm: It's just available now, this month.  Gotta order ASAP and hope it survives the shipping in this horrendous heat.

Mulleins are equal-opportunity flowers. They'd take on a rocky roadside as easily as a sand dune, a meadow, or a proper garden bed. And no wonder: Huge heavy (and sometimes fantastically silvery) felted leaves in a basal clump that smothers anything nearby. And also act just like mulch, keeping the surrounding soil cooler at the same time they conserve water by cutting down surface evaporation.

The thick felt helps the leaves themselves reduce evaporation too, while, handily, also helping keep them unpalatable for animals.
And the central bamboo-cane-thick stem thrusts head-high-in-the-sky a titanic candelabra of flowers, ensuring that pollinators—deliriously dedicated bees chiefly—can see the plant from anywhere. And also locate sister plants near and far to complete the pollination.


(Who-Knew? Moment: The bees aren't intentionally pollinating anything. Unalloyed altruism isn't part of any animal's DNA. Instead, the bees are focussed on foraging, getting pollen for the hive. When they find a good source—in this case, one of those verbascum blossoms—they make the cost-effective choice to move right over to the next verbascum blossom, and the next and the next, whether on this plant or that one a half-mile away. In other words, they exhaust one pollen source before going to the trouble of sussing out anew one. That thoroughness is why pollination takes place at all: When the bee's loaded up with pollen, she's also dusted over with the excess that, in the frenzy, didn't make it into her pollen sacks. That excess is what gets brushed off onto—i.e., that pollinates— the next flower of the same exact variety, not some random nearby flower of who-knows-what kind, where the pollen couldn't pollinate at all.  The bee doesn't have a clue and couldn't care less even so: it's all about getting more and more of that sure thing, that particular kind of pollen, first.)



I've long enjoyed the height, enthusiasm, and color of Verbascum thapsiforme.
Up to nine feet tall, in bloom for months, and with large flowers too.



And so, like a bee, when it comes to me and verbascums, More Is More too. More mulleins, in kind and in quantity both.



Here's an unusual tiny-flowered, but full-sized variety at Chanticleer. Wow what a staggeringly-good place.
The same impressive and smothering clump of large leaves...

...leading up to the same massive candelabra of untold hundreds of yellow flowers that perform, at least as an entire troop, for three months and more.

But the flowers are teensy, a quarter the size of mine.
See how much bigger (comparatively) the flowers of V. thapsiforme are?
Smaller isn't lesser. Smaller is fabulous! In the garden as in life, variety itself is valuable, regardless of the direction.



If the original is shorter, then taller is of interest (or shorter still). If the flowers are deep yellow, then please bring on pale yellow. If the leaves are green, then let's have them in purple or yellow or striped with white. If they are smooth, make them felted. If they are oval, turn them into ferny fingers. And if the flowers are large (well, -ish), then let's oooh and aaah over them when they are tiny instead.



And ooof and aaah I did.



Oo yes: and if the plant is available at Home Depot (or just growing there right by the road, where you can dig up a young rosette in early Spring for free), make the new variety scarce and expensive: I'll only want it more.



This mullein trumps all those aces, though: Even Chanticleer doesn't know the identity or where they got it. Either I'll need to make good friends so they'll let me harvest some seeds (not impossible) or I'll Google away in hopes of identifying the species as well as the source.
It sure looks like Verbascum olympicum...
...whose flowers are noticeably smaller than my thapsiforme's. (Thank you Hidden Hollow Farm for the picture.) But Chanticleer would have known this identify right off the bat. Mysterious indeed.

All tactics, please, to identify and the source Chanticleer's Mystery Mullein. Gotta have it!