Native. Annual. Propagates by seeds.

Time of bloom: July to October.

Seed-time: August to November.

Range: Maine to Kentucky, Florida, and Texas.

Habitat: Dry soil; fields and waste places.

Stem six to eighteen inches high, slender, stiff, obtusely four-angled, much branched, finely hairy, and viscid. Leaves oblong to lance-shaped, pointed at both ends, finely clammy-hairy on both sides, entire, with very short petioles. Panicles loosely spreading, the flowers single or in pairs on forking branchlets, subtended by paired bracts; the flowers are blue, sometimes pink or white, their most noticeable feature being the four very long, upcurving, violet stamens, thrust far out beyond the corolla -more than as long again; in the bud they are spirally coiled and both the common name and the "book-name" have reference to their remarkable appearance; corolla tube very slender, its lower lobe oblong and declined; calyx unequal, with three long and two short lobes, and when the withered corolla falls the four small, roughened, ovoid nutlets are in plain sight. (Fig. 241.)

Fig. 240.   American Germander (Teucrium canadense). X 1/4.

Fig. 240. - American Germander (Teucrium canadense). X 1/4.

Means Of Control

Enrich the land; when cultivated and supplied with humus, which will enable the soil to retain moisture, the drought-loving weed will disappear.