Blue Vervain

Verbena hastata

Blue Vervain brings a distinctive late-summer silhouette to wet and moist gardens. the branching candelabra of thin, pencil-like spikes, each studded with tiny blue-violet flowers that open progressively from base to tip in a moving ring of color. The show runs from July through September and the whole plant develops a sculptural branching form that looks almost architectural against the sky. Plant it at the edge of a rain garden or low area where water collects, and watch it fill out to four or five feet with ease. The seed heads that follow are equally valuable: small, triangular nutlets packed along the dry spikes that white-throated sparrows, swamp sparrows, and goldfinches harvest through fall and early winter. Blue Vervain was an important medicinal plant for numerous Indigenous nations across its wide native range, and it remains one of the most ecologically productive plants for wet garden margins, providing late-season nectar, larval host support for several specialist bees, and persistent seed for birds.