Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Forb/Herb

General: Perennial herbs from a taproot, up to 50 cm tall but usually smaller; stems square, branching from the base, decumbent-ascending or ascending; herbage coarsely hirsute, many of the hairs obscurely gland-tipped.

Leaves: Opposite, on margined petioles to 1-3 mm long; blades about 1 cm long, pinnatifid, ovate in outline, with prominent veins on the underside; leaf size and shape gradually reduced into linear bracts in the inflorescence.

Flowers: Blue to purple, in long slender spikes less than 1 cm wide; spikes 1-3 at the ends of branches; each flower subtended by a narrow bract which is longer than the flower; lowest bracts are reduced versions of the pinnatifid leaves, and grade into simple, linear bracts above; calyces 2 mm long, hirsute and hispidulous, minutely stipitate-glandular, with deltate lobes; corollas blue to purple, salverform, tubes 3 mm, slightly longer than the calyx, limbs 2-3 mm wide.

Fruits: Dry nutlets, more or less cylindrical, brown.

Ecology: Found on rocky slopes, in sandy canyon bottoms, on floodplains and in grasslands from 4,500-6,500 ft (1372-1981 m); flowers June-October.

Distribution: s AZ, sw NM; south to s MEX

Notes: This is a fairly uncommon species found only in the southern parts of Arizona and New Mexico, and south as far as Oaxaca. It is similar to the common and widespread Verbena bracteata but hairier, and with narrower spikes (V. bracteata has spikes > 1 cm wide, including the bracts). One of the key characters for identifying this species is the stipitate glands, but these are minute and difficult to impossible to see with a standard 10X hand lens.

Ethnobotany: Unknown

Etymology: Verbena is from the Latin name for vervain, while gracilis means slender.

Synonyms: None

Editor: SBuckley 2010, AHazelton 2015