(A) Blue-weed; Viper’s Bugloss (Echium vulgare) (European). This peculiar plant is locally abundant in dry fields and waste places in the East. It is regarded as a pest and is a difficult one to get rid of.
The stem is light green spotted with purple; it grows erect from 1 to 3 feet high. The flowers grow on leafy spikes springing from the stem near the top. When the first flowers appear, in June, they are close to the stalk at the base of the rolled-up, leafy spike. As they continue to bloom the spike gradually straightens and the open flowers appear farther and farther from t he stem. The showy, tubular corolla is bright blue, and is exceeded in length by the long stamens and three-parted style; the buds are pink.
(B) Small Bugloss (Lycopsis arvensis) (European). This is a very rough, bristly stemmed species, also naturalized from Europe, and now found in waste places near dwellings, from Me. to Minn. and south to Va. The lanceolate leaves are seated on the stem; they diminish to the size of bracts and pass into the racemes of small, tubular, violet-blue flowers.
VERVAIN FAMILY
(Verbenaceæ)
Herbs with opposite leaves and perfect but usually irregular flowers, the tubular corollas spreading into two lips or four or five lobes.
Blue Vervain (Verbena hastata) is our most common example of the genus. It is a tall, slender, rank-growing plant reaching heights of 2 to 7 feet. The leaves are dark green short stemmed, lanceolate, sharply toothed, and grow oppositely on the stem.
At the top of the stem are numerous slender flower spikes, each branching from the stem and assuming a vertical position, in a regular order suggestive of candelabra. These slender spikes contain many buds, the lower of which open first. From July until the end of August we will find rings of purple flowers about the spikes, gradually drawing nearer the ends as the flowering season advances and leaving behind a long trail of purplish calyces. The tubular corolla has five spreading lobes, a slender pistil, and two pairs of stamens.
