With eight thousand or so different taxa of plants at UBC, it can be quite the task to ensure the name is correct for each species or cultivar. This task is made more difficult through sourcing little-known cultivated varieties of plants in the quest for displaying the novel. The lavender in this photograph, for example, does not turn up in any search engine results (at least until this page is indexed), nor does UBC have any print references listed in its database.

The lack of any references immediately prompts the question as to whether this accession is misnamed. Lavandula latifolia only returns a few results in the Royal Horticultural Society's Plantfinder, and if you visit the record for L. latifolia, you'll note that the RHS only tentatively accepts the scientific name, suggesting that this species requires a systematic re-examination. At least one cultivar named 'Rosea' does exist for Lavandula, but it is a cultivated variety of Lavandula angustifolia (angustifolia = narrow-leaved), not Lavandula latifolia (latifolia = broad-leaved), so that seems to be a dead-end, though UBC does have Lavandula angustifolia 'Rosea' in its collections as well; I'm not aware of a side-by-side comparison having been done between the two accessions.

This plant goes on the list as “a mystery waiting to be solved”.

On a different note, you might like to read this comment on the Apple Festival. I think next year it might be handy to have an easy, centralized on-line way to record people's stories about the event, like Ruth suggested in the comments on Malus 'Melrose'. It looks like today's weather will be a tad wetter, but that shouldn't dissuade you from attending if you're local – it'll make the taste of the apples even more reminiscent of warm autumn days.