LOBELIACEAE LOBELIA FAMILY 
GREAT LOBELIA 
Lobelia siphilitica L. 
The Great Lobelia is common in low grounds from Maine and 
Ontario to South Dakota and south to Georgia, Louisiana and 
Colorado. It is perennial by short offsets and blooms from July to 
October. 
The stem is somewhat hairy, 
rather stout and very leafy. It is 
usually unbranched and grows 1-3 
feet high. The leaves are nearly 
smooth and 2-6 inches long. The 
lower usually have short petioles, 
and the upper are sessile. 
Deep blue or very rarely white 
flowers are densely arranged in a 
spikelike raceme. The flower parts 
are attached above the ovary. The 
calyx is quite hairy and has 5 
narrow lobes, and in the sinuses 
between them are large earlike, 
deflexed appendages. The blue 
corolla is split down 1 side and 2- 
lipped at the end. There are 5 
stamens with their anthers united 
in a ring around the style. Three 
of the anthers are larger than the 
other 2, which have a tuft of hairs 
at the tip. The ovary is 2-celled and the stigma 2-lobed. The 
fruit is a capsule containing hundreds of minute brown seeds. 
Much daintier, with smaller blue flowers, is the Downy Lobelia, 
Lobelia puberula Michx., frequent in moist sandy places throughout 
the southern third of the state. The downy stems are very slender 
and unbranched. Leaves are sessile, oblong-lanceolate, densely short 
haired and very minutely toothed. The flowers are in bracted long 
spikelike racemes. The calyx has 5 elongated hairy lobes and the 
corolla is distinctly 2-lipped with the 3 broader lobes beneath. The 
larger anthers are minutely bearded. The fruit is a many-seeded 
capsule. This perennial is found from southern New Jersey to Florida, 
west to Illinois, Kansas and Texas, and blooms from August to 
October. 
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