Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Echium vulgare
Common name
Vipers bugloss
Family
Boraginaceae
Where found
Weed of pastures, grassland, roadsides, gardens, disturbed places, and river banks. Widespread.
Notes
Introduced biennial to perennial herb (sometimes annual) to 1.2 m high. Stems with white stiff hairs and finer, shorter hairs. Leaves initially in a rosette, 1-15 cm long and 8-50 mm wide. Flowering stems with leaves alternating up the stems, becoming shorter and narrower towards the tops of the stems, surfaces densely hairy with coarser hairs along the veins, bases wedge-shaped to rounded, tips pointed or blunt, margins entire. Flowers 12–20 mm long, blue to mauve, funnel-shaped, with 5 unequal lobes. Flowers have four long stamens much longer than the flower tube, and one short stamen. Inflorescence conical with many spreading clusters. Flowering: late spring to summer.
General Biosecurity Duty all NSW. Pest plant ACT. Noxious weed Vic.
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Echium~vulgare (accessed 12 January, 2021)
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