This plant has reached a height of 9' in my seasonal stream bed. I'd class this plant as totally care-free. The leaves are coarse and they aren't pretty, but I find it to be a very nice background plant for a nearly-wild area.

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Midwest Indian tribes used this plant as a remedy for the 'fits' (Mesquakies), as a snuff to stop nosebleed (Chippewas), and as a beverage tea (Omahas). Early settlers likewise used the leaf in a tea as a spring tonic known as "simpler's joy" (an olden term for 'herbalist').
Vervain likes low wet areas, wet prairies, wet meadows, wet woodlands, stream borders, pond edges, low pastures, and along roadsides.
Flowers form a ring on spikes ('pencil-like') that start blooming at spike's base and seem to advance upward.
Roots are fibrous and short rhizomes
Seed (roasted), leaves (tea, salads), and roots are edible.

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This pretty perennial is native to mesic to wet meadows over southern Canada and much of the US. It forms an upright clump with stiff, erect squarish stems usually about 2 to 6 feet high. It bears about 1 foot long candlelabra-like panicle clusters of purple flowers in July and August. The flowers bloom from the bottom of the inflorescence upward. The foliage is bitter so that mammals don't feed on it; although the caterpillars of Verbena Moth & Buckeye Butterfly do feed on the foliage. It is fast growing and easily self-sows in meadows. it is a favored plant in the mix of prairie restorations in the Midwestern US. It is sold by a good number of native plant nurseries; not in conventional nurseries-garden centers. it certainly can be used in a native plant garden; sort of similar to my Ironweeds in my native, naturalistic garden.

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This herb self-seeds for me rather aggressively (Pacific NW). My whole chicken yard is filled with it, and the birds won't touch it (I believe the leaves are extremely bitter). I weedwack it regularly. Strangely, in my actual herb garden it is fairly well behaved. Go figure.

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Many plants growing on the Lake Huron shoreline as lake levels recede from record height.

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