Addisonia 1 1 



(Plate 230) 



VERBENA ERINOIDES 

 Moss Verbena 



Native of Peru and Chile 

 Family VerbEnaceae Vervain Family 



Verbena erinoides Lara. Tab. Kncyc. 1 : 57. 1791. 

 Verbena multifida Ruiz & Pav. Fl. Per. 1:21. 1798. 



During the middle of the last century one of the favorite flower- 

 ing plants, particularly for bedding out in summer, was the verbena. 

 At one time as many as three hundred varieties of verbenas were 

 catalogued. They were popular show varieties, derived from several 

 South American species, propagated by cuttings or by pegging down, 

 and were grown as large specimen plants. After perhaps 1880, 

 however, the decline in verbena growing was noticed in Europe and 

 America. Mr. S. Henshaw, the first Head Gardener of the New 

 York Botanical Garden, writing in Thomas Meehan's Monthly in 

 1896, bewailed the discard of the verbena. It is now a garden 

 annual, grown each year from seed. Verbena erinoides has per- 

 haps not entered into the making of the garden varieties to any 

 great extent, but is grown as an annual for its own beauty. It is 

 now rather rare in cultivation, but has been grown in our flower 

 borders near range one of greenhouses, along with its congener, Ver- 

 bena venosa, a sort with larger, shiny leaves and pink-purple blooms. 



Seeds of the moss verbena should be sown in boxes or pots early 

 in spring and transplanted to the open ground after warm settled 

 weather. 



The moss verbena is a branching herb with hairy stems from an 

 annual root. The leaves are ovate in outline, but are finely divided 

 into many acute lobes, and are rough-hairy above and on the veins 

 beneath. The flowers are in short dense spikes, one to two inches 

 long, lengthening in fruit, with pointed bracts subtending the 

 flowers and seeds. The calyxes are five-angled and five-lobed, with 

 one lobe shorter and smaller. The corollas are pink-purple, with 

 long tube and spreading limb of five lobes. In the corollas the 

 upper one or two lobes are enough different in size to make them 

 almost two-lobed. The stamens are four, inserted within the co- 

 rolla tube in two pairs, the longer pair with a brownish-purple 

 appendage to the anther-connective. The seeds are up to one 

 half inch long, slender, five-to six-angled and often have the per- 

 sistent calyx enclosing them. 



Kenneth R. Boynton. 



