Often on her travels your Road Trips Gardener runs across bedding plants not common in the United States.

This time, it’s lithodora — seen here in Wismar, Germany, last spring.

According to Wikipedia, lithodora is a genus of flowering plants in the family Boraginaceae, native to southwestern Europe, southern Greece, Turkey and Algeria. They are low-growing, evergreen shrubs and subshrubs, producing five-lobed blue (as in this photo) or white flowers.

In Greek, lithodora translates to gift of the stones, a reference to their rocky native habitat.

(Photo ©2013 by Susan McKee)