Flowers. Australian Plant Image Index, photo: Murray Fagg, Cooma, NSW

Plants. Photo: Don Wood, Carnarvon Station Bush Heritage Reserve, via Augathella, Qld

Plants. Australian Plant Image Index, photo: Murray Fagg, Cooma, NSW

Common Name

Common Verbena, Vervain

Family

Verbenaceae

Notes

Introduced annual or perennial forb to 1.5m tall. Leaves opposite each other, 1.5-12cm long, 5-50mm wide, flat, rough, sticky, margins with shallow lobes to almost entire. Flowers pink or mauve, tubular, with 5 lobes, in lax panicles at the tops of the stems, the flowers farther apart on the lower part of the inflorescence, closer together higher up.

Differs from Verbena africana in that the lower leaves are toothed and  never dissected.

Differs from Verbena gaudichaudii in that the plant the inflorescence is distinctly glandular.

The description above is based on the description in Munir, A.A., (2002) A taxonomic revision of the genus Verbena L. (Verbenaceae) in Australia. Journal of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens 20: 76-82

Description and photo in G.M. Cunningham, WE Mulham, PL Milthorpe and J H Leigh (1981 and later printings) Plants of Western New South Wales page 569. Note that this description pre-dates the splitting off of Verbena gaudichaudii and Verbena africana from this species.

PlantNET description:  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl= sp&name=Verbena~officinalis  Note that this description is unchanged from that in Gwen J. Harden (editor) Flora of New South Wales, Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney, volume 3, pages 613-614, which pre-dates the splitting off of Verbena gaudichaudii and Verbena africana from this species.