I'm not exactly sure what year it was: possibly in the mid 1990's. Zdenek Zvolanek and Joyce Carruthers came back with some special seed from Ulu Dag they thought might have commercial value in Colorado. I don't know if they had the name "Matthiola montana" then or later...if you research this name you will see a plant that liooks a little bit like this native to Algeria, even Europe. Not this compact or showy, however!
So we cannot be too sure of the name. The furry rosettes are lovely year around--and those fragrant, showy umbels last much of the early growing season, reblooming a bit some years.
Maybe you aren't as crazy about purple/lavender/mauve/lilac as I am. I also love the cute way the flowers cluster around the wavy leaved rosettes. This plant is not a Methusalah--usually only lasts three or four years. I am so fond of it I always collect the seed (insurance)--so I will never know if it has any propensity to self sow...
Here growing with a similar colored Aethionema in my home garden...
I like the more compact forms like this one that nestle over the rosettes.
There are so many very decorative stocks: I remember seeing Matthiola fruticolosa growing wildly on the rockwork at New York Botanic Gardens' rock garden. I've yearned to get a handful of seed and see if it would do the same for us. And then there is that wonderful miniature above--an annual, alas--which poppued up in my back yard and bloomed incessantly several summers (self sowing the whole time: I have grown complacent: sure hopes she comes back this year!)
I have grown a handful of other species, like the chocolate stock--something gnawing at me tells me that there are many more. Matthiola trojana is weird and wonderful--a bit like the mystery one at the top come to think of it...
Graham Stuart Thomas declared in his magnus opus on rock gardening that "all the best plants were already in cultivation" for rock gardens. I don't think Mr. Stuart Thomas had really taken stock!
