I spent the last couple of weeks in southern Spain and I saw a lot of one particular plant in bloom - links to photos below, but here’s a brief description:
It’s a wiry shrub; most large examples growing no taller than about a metre, with a spread of maybe 1.5 metres.
Foliage is somewhat succulent; leaves are needle-like - similar to Rosemary (but more fleshy)
No particular distinctive aroma when crushed - just smells like vegetation
The examples in flower were often so covered with bloom that the stems and leaves were almost completely obscured. The flowers are individually a little less than 1cm across - and varied in colour from creamy yellow through to deep magenta (I am unsure whether this is just variation from one plant to another, or if they start one colour and mature to a different colour)
The flower petals themselves were translucent and felt somewhat fleshy and moist. I regret not having looked close enough to count individual petals, but from my photos, it looks as though they might be fused anyway.
The flowers were night-scented.
The habitat was coastal scrub in a fairly arid part of Murcia, Spain.
Looks like azalea to me. I have never been to Spain so I am not sure what grows there. But the bush looks similar to me. Azaleas can have a variety of bloom colors and bloom size.
Especially picture 5.
Thanks, but I don’t think it will have been an Ericaceous plant - I think the soil is pretty alkaline in the area I saw this. I don’t think there are any azalea species with flowers this small.
Could the mystery plant be a Cistus species (one pictured in the Wikipedia link has sort of Rosemary-like foliage, though it’s not the plant Mangetout photographed)?
I was going to say that the plant doesn’t look like anything I recognize and that I’d ask my mother, but escobilla does look like the pics and it’s endemic to Murcia. While there are places in Navarre which look a lot like the “landscape” pics, we’re pretty much on the other end of the country, so it makes sense that I wouldn’t have seen it before. I’ll still try and remember to ask Mom when I see her though.
It’s interesting, because if I had known it was in the chenopodaceae (spinach family), I might have been tempted to think it edible. I wouldn’t have actually eaten it without further research of course.