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Motherwort
(Leonurus cardiaca)
You might be able to guess one of
the old uses of this plant by looking at the botanical name...
Not a native. Brought here as as useful herb by early settlers from Europe. This plant was used as a heart (cardiac) stimulant by herb doctors, and also for women's disorders (which is why "mother" is part of the name). This plant was found in everyones herb garden along with the other old-fashioned standards like catnip, and tansy. Early New England colonists valued motherwort.
This is the flower spike. The pale lavender flowers cluster in a whorl around the square stem.
Each whorl of flowers sits at the base of the pair of leaves (in the "axils" of the leaves...the axil is the upper angle where a leaf grows out from a stem).
The foliage is so handsomely and clearly veined that motherwort is an easy plant to spot once you know it.
Notice how the leaves are arranged in pairs opposite each other.
The leaves are lobed (the 3 to 5 bigger fingers sticking out....like extra thumbs on a mitten).
This is the tiny odd-looking flower.
I have a somewhat bigger picture if it and the surrounding
plant that takes up most of your screen . ....to large image.
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