Synonyms: Other names: bigbract verbena Nomenclature: bracteata = with bracts Nativity / Invasiveness: Montana native plant
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No medicinal data
Description
General: annual or more often perennial. Stems usually numerous, 10-60 cm long, trailing or creeping, sparsely spreading-stiff-hairy, from a taproot. Small plants rarely single-stemmed and erect.
Leaves: opposite, coarsely flat-stiff-hairy, mostly with winged stalks, the blade commonly 2-5 cm long and 1-2.5 cm wide, irregularly toothed and cleft, often with one or two pairs of pinnate segments near the base, well differentiated from the larger, terminal segment.
Flowers: many in dense, elongated clusters up to 15 cm long, at the end of the main stem and branches. The leaf-like bracts entire, lance-linear, spreading, 5-15 mm long, conspicuously surpassing the 2.5-4 mm calyx of the flowers. Corolla inconspicuous, almost hidden by the bracts, bluish or pinkish to rarely white, the tube about 4 mm long, the limb 2-3 mm wide, unequally 5-lobed.
May-September.
Fruits: small, dry, mostly enclosed in the calyx, readily separating into 4 linear-oblong nutlets.
Distribution
Roadsides and other open disturbed habitats, often in compacted soil, in most parts of MT. Also from B.C. to ME, s. to CA, Mexico and FL.
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No edibility data
No medicinal data
