Pollinators love thyme flowers, no matter what the species or cultivar. They emerge in late spring and flower all summer in a bright carpet of vivid pink. In contrast, creeping thyme’s flowers are numerous. However, the cultivar Hall’s woolly thyme is profuse flowerer, so don’t get them mixed up! When it does flower in late spring to summer its blooms are tubular and bright pink. Woolly thyme is not a profuse bloomer and sometimes won’t flower at all, so it’s favorite with people who are allergic to bee stings. Woolly Thyme vs Creeping Thyme: Flowers Creeping thyme flowers prolifically in the late spring and blooms all summer. On top of this, creeping thymes have miniature leaves, which are very tedious to harvest. If you want to use thyme in the kitchen, choose culinary thyme as this has a much stronger scent and taste. Woolly thyme’s foliage is less fragrant than creeping thyme, but neither of them are much good for cooking.

It’ll reach around one to two inches in height and spread over just one foot, so it’s not as wide as woolly thyme. Whereas woolly thyme’s leaves are matte, creeping thyme tends to have a silvery sheen. In contrast, creeping thyme has lighter, greener foliage and its leaves are smaller than woolly thyme’s leaves. It’s a great filler between paving slabs, along pathways and spilling over walls. It’ll grow to just a few inches in height and spread over one to three feet to form a dense, ground covering mat of fluffy slightly fragrant leaves. Woolly thyme is the woolliest and grayest of all the thymes and it looks fuzzy from quite a distance. Woolly Thyme vs Creeping Thyme: Foliage Woolly thyme looks fuzzy from a distance and grows well spilling over walls. This article in the Journal of Medicine and Life investigates thyme oil’s potential antiseptic properties. More recently, thyme has fallen under the spotlight for its medicinal activity. More recently thyme has been cultivated to produce many different cultivars with different blooms, scents, and growing habits. Experts think the Romans took thyme across Europe as they invaded and from there it spread to the Americas. The ancient Greeks believed thyme brought courage on the battlefield and the Egyptians used it to embalm mummies. It’s a real heat lover and has been used by ancient civilizations for thousands of years as food, ornamentation, and medicine. Thyme is native to Europe, particularly the Mediterranean. It’s known as Thymus pseudolanuginosus, but was once called Thymus languinosus, and has a synonym Thymus praecox subsp. Its scientific name has changed over the years due to confusion with other very similar thyme species. Woolly thyme is a variety of creeping thyme also in the lamiaceae mint family that grows horizontally. You can walk over it to a certain extent and some gardeners like to grow it as lawn instead of grass. It branches horizontally to hug the ground rather than growing upright like culinary thyme.Ĭreeping thyme is a woody perennial herb that’s edible and does a great job of protecting soil. One to two inches tall and horizontally branchingĬreeping thyme ( Thymus serpyllum) is a species of thyme in the Lamiaceae family. Tiny and bright pink but it often doesn’t bloom Creeping thyme is a prolific flowerer, but woolly thyme often doesn’t bloom at all. A second difference is their flowering habit. As its name suggests, woolly thyme has gray, fuzzy foliage, whereas creeping thyme’s foliage is silvery-green and almost smooth. The main difference between the two is their foliage. What’s The Difference Between Woolly and Creeping Thyme? The key difference between woolly thyme and creeping thyme is their foliage. Let’s take a look at the variations between woolly thyme vs creeping thyme. Woolly thyme and creeping thyme are both ground-covering plants that smell divine and spread out to protect soil from the elements, but there are a few small differences that set them apart.

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When to plant thyme ground cover