close up image of Verbena hastata BLUE VERVAIN at the James Woodworth Prairie Preserve - showing several bloom spikes with flowers opening at the bottom and blooming their way up the spikes, detailing several flowers at full open.
close up image of Verbena hastata BLUE VERVAIN at the James Woodworth Prairie Preserve - showing a flower head just at the end of bloom, before the seeds have ripened.
Verbena hastata is a short-lived, native perennial forb which, like many moisture loving plants of open wet meadows and pond/creek edges, gets off to a very quick start (as in "sprint") and flowers in its first year of growth. While fully mature plants are typically five to six feet tall, at the time this picture was taken this plant was a mere 38 cm tall (and it started to flower when it was less than 30 cm tall) and it germinated from seed only a few months ago. This appears to be a pioneer species based on other seeding experiments.July 31, 2014, Salt Lake County, Utah, approx, 4,360 ft. with Typha latifolia (left).