Family ²

Verbenaceae

Description ³

Verbena hastata (blue vervain or swamp verbena) is a flowering plant in the vervain family, Verbenaceae. It is a herb with opposite, simple leaves which have double-serate margins, borne on stiffly erect, branching square stems. The flowers appear in summer and are purple. This is a common plant that occurs across North America. They are hardy and drought resistant.

Community ²

characteristic of disturbed places, wetland-riparian

Flowering ²

Jul- Aug

Ethnobotany ²

Mahuna Drug (Febrifuge, Gastrointestinal Ai) Romero, John Bruno 1954 The Botanical Lore of the California Indians. New York. Vantage Press, Inc. (p. 9)

Concow Food (Staple) Chestnut, V. K. 1902 Plants Used by the Indians of Mendocino County, California. Contributions from the U.S. National Herbarium 7:295-408. (p. 383)

Garden Location ²

G

Associated species ²

native bees (pollen / nectar) XERCES
butterflies

• Mournful Duskywing Erynnis tristis (nectar) ASB

• California Dogface Zerene eurydice (nectar) ASB
  song sparrow, and slate-colored junco eat the seeds of blue vervain. The cottontail rabbit will sometimes eat the foliage; most other mammalian herbivores avoid it due its bitter taste. The caterpillars of the verbena moth feed on the leaves and it is the larval host for the common buckeye butterfly. Long and short tongued bees collect the nectar and sometimes the pollen. Other bee pollinators include: epoline cuckoo bees, eucerine miner bees , halictid bees, and the verbena bee, a specialist pollinator. In addition the thread-waisted wasp, bee flies, thick-headed flies and golden soldier beetle are also known to all visit blue vervain. (USDA- NRCS)

Sources and Credits

1. (c) Dan Mullen, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-ND), http://www.flickr.com/photos/8583446@N05/3796443149
2. (c) gillian360, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA)
3. Adapted by gillian360 from a work by (c) Wikipedia, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbena_hastata

More Info

• iNat taxon page
• Biodiversity Heritage Library
• BOLD Systems BIN search
• Calflora
• CalPhotos
• eFloras.org
• Flora of North America (beta)
• Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)
• Go Botany
• HOSTS - a Database of the World's Lepidopteran Hostplants
• IPNI (with links to POWO, WFO, and BHL)
• Jepson eFlora
• Maryland Biodiversity Project
• NatureServe Explorer 2.0
• NBN Atlas
• OregonFlora.org
• SEINet Symbiota portals
• Tropicos
• USDA PLANTS database
• VASCAN by Canadensys
• World Flora Online

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