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Aquatic and Wetland Vascular Plants of the Northern Great Plains

Verbenaceae - The Vervain Family

Perennial herbs with 4-angled, erect or mostly prostrate stems and simple, opposite, serrate leaves. Inflorescence of dense, terminal or axillary, bracteate spikes, these elongate or globose to short-cylindric, elongating as flowering progresses upward from the base. Flowers small and numerous, perfect, slightly to obviously irregular; calyx 5-toothed or deeply 2-parted; corolla 5- or 4-lobed, bilabiate or slightly so, blue-violet or white to bluish or purple-tinged; stamens 4, didynamous, epipetalous, included by the corolla or slightly exserted; pistil 2-carpellary, style terminal (not gynobasic as in Lamiaceae), ovary superior, 4- or 2-celled. Fruit developing inside the calyx, splitting lengthwise into 4 or 2 nutlets at maturity, each nutlet containing a seed.

Lead	Characteristic	Go To
1	Flowers white to bluish or purplish, in globose to short-cylindric spikes from the axils.	Genus Lippia
1	Flowers blue-violet, in elongate, terminal spikes.	Genus Verbena

40. Verbenaceae, the Vervain Family

1. Lippia L. -- Fog-Fruit

1. Lippia lanceolata Michx. -- Northern fog-fruit

2. Verbena L. -- Vervain

1. Verbena hastata L. -- Blue vervain

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