Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
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Echium vulgare
Vipers bugloss
Boraginaceae
Weed of pastures, grassland, roadsides, gardens, disturbed places, and river banks. Widespread.
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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