VERBENACEAE (VERVAIN FAMILY) 



346 



grooved petioles. Spikes numerous, very 

 slender, the small, five-lobed, tubular flowers 

 sometimes scattered along their length but 

 usually grouped in a short circlet with a 

 green stretch of buds above and another of 

 growing and ripening fruits below. The 

 small, brown nutlets usually drop from the 

 stalk, calyx and all, without separating. 

 They are a frequent impurity in clover and 

 grass seeds. 



Means of control the same as for White 

 Vervain. 



LARGE-BRACTED VERVAIN 



Verbena bractedsa, Michx. 



Native. Annual or perennial. Propagates 



by seeds. 



Time of bloom: May to July. FlG 238. Blue Ver- 



Seed-time <: June to August. vain (Verbena hastata). 



Range: Minnesota to British Columbia, x i 



southward to Georgia, Florida, Texas, 



and California. 

 Habitat: Plains and prairies ; grasslands, waste places. 



Stems numerously branched from the base, some prostrate and 

 some ascending, very slender, four-sided, rough-hairy, six to 

 fifteen inches long. Leaves broadly wedge-shaped in outline but 

 pinnatifid, the lobes cut and toothed, the basal pair spreading and 

 narrowing abruptly to short, margined petioles. Spikes single, 

 the blossoms being scattered somewhat remotely along each spike 

 and having the hairy bracts subtending the flowers very long 

 and stiff, the lower ones pinnatifid, nearly concealing the small, 

 purplish blue corollas. Each plant produces many of the little 

 nutlets which foul the soil worse than other species because of 

 their earlier maturity. Seed-bearing plants are often transported 

 in baled hay, and the weed has of recent years been thus intro- 

 duced in a number of widely separated localities in the northeastern 

 part of the country. 



Means of control the same as for V. stricta. 



