Smooth Hedge Nettle (Stachys tenuifolia)
- Family: Mint (Lamiaceae)
- Flowering: June-September.
- Field Marks: This species of Stachys has generally smooth stems and conspicuously veiny leaves.
- Habitat: Wet woods, along streams, around ponds and lakes, swamps, sloughs.
- Habit: Perennial herb with tufted roots.
- Stems: Erect, unbranched, 4-sided, smooth or with some hairs only on the angles, up to 2 1/2 feet tall.
- Leaves: Opposite, simple, lanceolate to ovate, pointed at the tip, rounded at the base, toothed, smooth or sometimes hairy, conspicuously veiny, up to 3 inches long.
- Flowers: Several in interrupted spikes at the tip of the stems; each flower subtended by a bract, purple, bilaterally symmetrical, up to 1/2 inch long.
- Petals: 5, purple, 2-lipped: the upper lip 2-lobed; the lower lip 3-lobed.
- Stamens: 4.
- Pistils: Ovary superior, 4-parted.
- Fruits: Nutlets about 1/10 inch long.
- Notes: The nutlets are eaten by wildlife.
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