(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 re¬ 
garded 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 the 
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 nat¬ 
uralized 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. 
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