Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Forb/Herb

General: Perennial herbs, 30-70 cm tall, from a taproot; stems 1-5, erect to ascending, 4-angled, covered with short, stiff hairs, some of them minutely gland-tipped.

Leaves: Opposite, sessile to subsessile, the lower leaves early-withering; blades deeply incised-dentate or pinnatifid, narrowly ovate in outline, 2-5 cm long, surfaces hirsute and sparsely stipitate glandular.

Flowers: Small, white to violet, in 1-3 slender elongate spikes per stem; each flower subtended by an ovate-triangular bract, 2 mm long, shorter than the calyx; calyx 3-4 mm long, 5-toothed, cylindric; corolla salverform, white, blue, or violet, slightly longer than the calyx, the limb 2 mm wide.

Fruits: A group of 4 nutlets densely white-scaberulous on the inner face.

Ecology: Found in foothills and canyons, from 2,000-6,000 ft (610-1829 m); flowers March-October.

Distribution: CA, AZ, NM, sw TX and FL; south to n MEX.

Notes: Distinguished by being a mostly-erect perennial with opposite, lobed leaves and a long, thin, leafless spike with purple flowers and small, narrow bracts below each flower/fruit. Similar to V. pinetorum but that species has less hirsute stems (though still sparsely hairy) and wider corolla limbs, 5-9 mm in diameter. It is noteworthy that older literature states that V. neomexicana has corolla limbs up to 10 mm in diameter. The recent treatment by Guy Nesom states that this species has corolla limbs only 1.5- 2.5 mm wide, and his annotations place the many specimens with wider corolla widths into V. pinetorum.

Ethnobotany: Unknown

Etymology: Verbena is the Latin word for vervain, while neomexicana means of or from New Mexico.

Synonyms: None

Editor: LCrumbacher 2011, FSCoburn 2015, AHazelton 2015