How to Know the Wild Flowers

The book that taught America botany by color: find your flower under White, Yellow, Pink or Blue, and read its name, its haunts and its folklore — the first field guide organized the way people actually look.

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Lopseed

Phryma Leptostachya. Vervain Family.

Two to three feet high; with slender, branching stems. Leaves.--Opposite; oval; coarsely toothed; the lower long-stemmed. Flowers.--Pinkish; small, in long, slender terminal spikes. Calyx.--Two-lipped; the upper lip of three sharp teeth; the lower shorter, twice-toothed. Corolla.--Two-lipped; upper lip small, notched; the lower much larger; three-lobed. Stamens.--Four; in two pairs of unequal length; within corolla. Pistil-One; with a slender style and tow-lobed stigma.

Very noticeable in summer in somewhat open woods are the slender, branching clusters made up of the small pink flowers of the lopseed. Later the hooked, slender teeth of the ribbed calyx close about the one-seeded fruit. The branching fruit-clusters then make this plant almost as conspicuous as during its flowering season.

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