General Details
Dakota Name:
Ćahadoga pezuta
Scientific Name:
Verbena stricta
Alternate Names:
Hoary verbena
Height:
Grows 2 - 4 feet
Flowers:
Purplish-blue, 1/2 inch long flowers. Bloom mid-summer to early fall. Tubular shaped, 5-lobed, densely packed on pencil like stalks.
Fruit:
Fruit is dry and spits open to expose 4 tiny nuts when ripe in the fall.
Habitat:
Prairies, glades, thickets, fields, waste ground, along railroads and roadsides.
Plant Characteristics
A rough, vigorous, clump forming perennial with square stems, it gets its common name from the white pubescence on its graygreen leaves and stems. Flowers bloom only a few at a time from
bottom to top. Leaves are opposite, oval-shaped, coarselytoothed, usually stalkless and up to 4 inches long, covered with whitish hairs. Foliage has a gray-green appearance. Note: Leaves
and stem covered in a denser amount of fine hairs versus the blue vervain which has smoother stem and leaves.
Dakota Cultural Use
The leaves were steeped in a tea and the infusion taken for stomach aches.