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.

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.