Native. Perennial. Propagates by seeds.

Time of bloom: June to September.

Seed-time: August to November.

Range: New England to Nebraska, southward to Georgia and Texas. Habitat: Moist grasslands, roadsides, fencerows, banks of streams, and waste places.

Fig. 239. -Creeping Bugleweed (Ajuga reptans).

Not a woodland plant in spite of its name. Stem one to three feet high, slender, erect, simple or with few branches, covered with fine, appressed hairs. Leaves long-ovate to lance-shaped, green above, appressed gray-hairy beneath, sharply toothed, narrowing to short petioles. Flowers in long, crowded racemes, six inches to a foot in length, making the plant conspicuous when growing in meadows; calyx densely velvety-hairy, five-toothed; corolla pink or rose-purple, the lower lip with one large, rounded spreading lobe and two small pointed ones; upper lip deeply cleft, the exserted stamens and style thrust out between its lobes; the blossoms are often nearly an inch long, in whorls of six or more, on very short pedicels, subtended by leafy bracts about as long as the calyx. Nutlets obovoid and rough. (Fig. 240.)

Means Of Control

If the infestation is new, grub out or hand-pull the plants when the ground is soft, before the first flowers mature; or cut closely and repeatedly during the growing season, so as to starve the roots and prevent seed production.