Northeast Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Scutellaria integrifolia L.
- Family: Mint (Labiatae)
- Flowering: May-September
- Field Marks: This skullcap has blue flowers in a single terminal raceme or single panicle and sessile, toothless upper leaves not over 3/4 inch wide.
- Habitat: Woods, fields.
- Habit: Perennial herb from a thickened, woody base.
- Stems: Upright, unbranched to branched, square, up to 2 feet tall, densely covered with incurved hairs.
- Leaves: Opposite, simple, linear-lanceolate to ovate, the uppermost ones very narrow, pointed at the tip, rounded at the sessile base, densely gray-hairy, the lower leaves round-toothed, up to 2 inches long, up to 3/4 inch wide, the lower without teeth.
- Flowers: Several in a terminal raceme or terminal panicle; flowers up to 1 1/2 inches long, blue, the lowest subtended by leafy bracts.
- Sepals: 5, green, 2-lipped, united below, up to 1/3 inch long, finely hairy, with a distinct protuberance about the middle.
- Petals: 5, blue, rarely white or purplish, 2-lipped, united below to form a tube up to 1 1/2 inches long.
- Stamens: 4, attached to the tube of the petals.
- Pistils: Ovary superior, 4-parted.
- Fruits: Nutlets black, spherical, up to 1/12 inch in diameter.
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