_Verbena hastata_
_Flowers_--Very small, purplish blue, in numerous slender, erect,
compact spikes. Calyx 5-toothed; corolla tubular, unequally 5-lobed; 2
pairs of stamens; 1 pistil. _Stem:_ 3 to 7 ft. high, rough, branched
above, leafy, 4-sided. _Leaves:_ Opposite, stemmed, lance-shaped,
saw-edged rough, lower ones lobed at base.
_Preferred Habitat--_Moist meadows, roadsides, waste places.
_Flowering Season_--June-September.
_Distribution_--United States and Canada in almost every part.
Seeds below, a circle of insignificant purple-blue flowers in the
centre, and buds at the top of the vervain’s slender spires do not
produce a striking effect, yet this common plant certainly does not lack
beauty. John Burroughs, ever ready to say a kindly, appreciative word
for any weed, speaks of its drooping, knotted threads, that “make a
pretty etching upon the winter snow.” Bees, the vervain’s benefactors,
are usually seen clinging to the blooming spikes, and apparently asleep
on them. Borrowing the name of Simpler’s Joy from its European sister,
the flower has also appropriated much of the tradition and folk-lore
centred about that plant which herb-gatherers, or simplers, truly
delighted to see, since none was once more salable.
Ages before Christians ascribed healing virtues to the vervain--found
growing on Mount Calvary, and therefore possessing every sort of
miraculous power, according to the logic of simple peasant folk--the
Druids had counted it among their sacred plants. “When the dog-star
arose from unsunned spots” the priests gathered it. Did not
Shakespeare’s witches learn some of their uncanny rites from these
reverend men of old? One is impressed with the striking similarity of
many customs recorded of both. Two of the most frequently used
ingredients in witches cauldrons were the vervain and the rue. “The
former probably derived its notoriety from the fact of its being sacred
to Thor, an honor which marked it out, like other lightning plants, as
peculiarly adapted for occult uses,” says Mr. Thiselton Dyer in his
“Folk-lore of Plants.” “Although vervain, therefore, as the enchanter’s
plant, was gathered by witches to do mischief in their incantations,
yet, as Aubrey says, it ‘hinders witches from their will,’ a
circumstance to which Drayton further refers when he speaks of the
vervain as ‘’gainst witchcraft much avayling.’” Now we understand why
the children of Shakespeare’s time hung vervain and dill with a
horseshoe over the door.
In his eighth Eclogue, Virgil refers to vervain as a charm to recover
lost love. Doubtless this was the verbena, the _herba sacra_ employed in
ancient Roman sacrifices, according to Pliny. In his day the bridal
wreath was of _verbena_, gathered by the bride herself.