Verbena hastata, “blue vervain”
Verbenaceae
Been wanting to post about this after I heard about friends using it for back pain. I believe I have seen it out car windows on the highway, but these photos from Illinois Wildflowers, as I just haven’t had time to go look at these.
For cultivation, the preference is full to partial sunlight, moist conditions, and soil consisting of fertile loam or wet muck. This plant tolerates standing water if it is temporary. This is a good plant to locate near a small river or pond in a sunny location. Habitats include river bottom prairies, moist meadows in floodplain woodlands, soggy thickets, borders of rivers and ponds, marshes, ditches, fence rows, and pastures. This plant adapts readily to degraded wetlands and other disturbed areas, but it can be found in higher quality habitats as well.
Mammalian herbivores usually avoid eating this plant because of its bitter leaves – an exception is the Cottontail Rabbit, which may eat the foliage of young plants to a limited extent. Also, various songbirds occasionally eat the seeds, including the Cardinal, Swamp Sparrow, Field Sparrow, Song Sparrow, and Slate-Colored Junco. Experimental studies have shown that these seeds can pass undamaged through the digestive tracts of cattle, therefore they are probably distributed to some extent by these seed-eating birds.
Contains the active components tannin, a bitter principle, the glucosides verbenalin and verbenin. Herbalists recommend using an infusion as an anthelmintic, anti-rheumatic, anti-periodic, antispasmodic, emetic, expectorant, sedative, and tonic for treating intermittent fevers, diseases of the spleen and liver, epilepsy, stones, gravel, to restore blood circulation and as an antidote to poke (Phytolacca americana) poisoning.
Paradise Ecological Services 