BLUE AND PURPLE GROUP 



bloom. River banks. New York to South Carolina and 

 westward. Often cultivated. 



Viper's Bugloss. Blue-weed. Blue Devil 



Echium vulgare. — Family, Borage. Color, blue at first, be- 

 coming red. Buds, pink. Corolla, 5-lobed, spreading, with red 

 stamens protruding. Flowers, compactly panicled on the upper 

 side of a curved branch. Leaves, coarse, hairy, linear to lance- 

 shaped, sessile. Stem, 1 to 3 feet high. June to September. 



A coarse and bristly plant, not without a certain pretti- 

 ness in the blossoms, but along roadsides covered with dust, 

 plebeian-looking. Dry soil, roadsides and fields. Common. 



Blue Vervain 



Verbena hastata. — Family, Vervain. Color, violet blue. Calyx, 

 5-toothed, one tooth being shorter than the others. Corolla, 

 tubular, with spreading border, 5-cleft. Flowers, in spikes, sessile, 

 small, narrow, on erect, 4-sided stems, 3 to 7 feet high. Leaves, 

 petioled, oblong to lance-shape, sharply pointed at apex, the 

 lower often lobed or halberd-shaped, serrate with sharp teeth. 

 June to September. 



In low grounds, borders of swamps, moist fields and mead- 

 ows in all the Eastern States and westward to New Mexico. 



The vivid blue of this tall plant makes it a conspicuous 

 fall flower. It would be pretty were the flowers all to blos- 

 som at once; but buds above, seeds below, a small circle of 

 bloom between is its parsimonious habit. 



The vervain (verbena) seems to have been connected with 

 magic, acting as a charm against witches. Says Mr. Knight, 

 in his biography of Shakespeare: 



" Some of the children said that a horseshoe over the door, 

 and vervain and dill, would preserve them, as they had been 

 told, from the devices of sorcery." (See illustration, p. 332.) 



V. angustifblia. — Color, purple or blue. A low plant with 

 slender stem, 1 to 2 feet high. Leaves, linear or lance -shape, 

 tapering into short petioles, serrate. Spikes of flowers crowded, 

 single, terminating the branches. Fruits quickly follow the 

 flowers, overlapping one another. July and August. 



Dry, sandy soil, Massachusetts to Florida and westward. 



European Vervain 

 V, officinalis, — Color, purplish. Flowers, small, with the 2- 

 lipped corolla in long, thread-like spikes which at first are short, 



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