Plant Name
Scientific Name: Verbena gracilis
Common Names: Fort Huachuca Vervain, Fort Huachuca Verbena
Plant Characteristics
Duration: Perennial
Growth Habit: Herb/Forb
Arizona Native Status: Native
Habitat: Upland. This relatively inconspicuous wildflower can be found growing on rocky slopes and in canyons, desert grasslands, chaparral, and oak-pine-juniper woodlands.
Flower Color: Lavender, Purplish pink
Flowering Season: Summer, Fall
Height: Up to 20 inches (50 cm) tall
Description: The very small flowers are in long, slender (less than 1 cm wide), erect, minutely stipitate-glandular flower spikes. The individual flowers are tubular and have a 2-lobed upper lip, a 3-lobed lower lip, a somewhat hairy, white throat, and conspicuous, elongated, linear-lanceolate, green floral bracts. The flowers are followed by small, dry seed capsules. The leaves are small, green, hairy, opposite, egg-shaped in outline, and deeply toothed or pinnately lobed. The stems are green, covered with bristly hairs, minutely stipitate-glandular, slender, well-branched, and prostrate, decumbent, or somewhat ascending.
The similar Bigbract Verbena (Verbena bracteata) also has very small flowers and prostrate stems, but it has larger, more leaflike floral bracts, fatter (more than 1 cm wide) flower spikes, and foliage that is not conspicuously glandular.
Classification
Kingdom: Plantae – Plants
Subkingdom: Tracheobionta – Vascular plants
Superdivision: Spermatophyta – Seed plants
Division: Magnoliophyta – Flowering plants
Class: Magnoliopsida – Dicotyledons
Subclass: Asteridae
Order: Lamiales
Family: Verbenaceae – Verbena family
Genus: Verbena L. – vervain
Species: Verbena gracilis Desf. – Fort Huachuca vervain
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