Forked bluecurls (Trichostema dichotomum) is a small annual forb in the Lamiaceae, easy to miss because the flowers are small, too. It’s worth stopping to take a close look, though, because the color is stunning, and mint family flowers are just nifty.
For detailed information about forked bluecurls, see this post from 2016.
Many thanks to my friend B for posting about this find on social media; I hadn’t seen forked bluecurls in years, and dropped everything to go photograph them.
Continuing with pretty pictures during this cold season. It’s a thin line between blue and purple. Color is a continuum. Color is in the eye of the beholder. If some of these look more blue or pink than purple, well, c’est la vie.
Triodanis perfoliata (Venus’ looking glass; Campanulaceae)
Look for this annual forb growing in rocky places where there isn’t much competition from other plants. It generally blooms from about mid May into early June here in the Maryland piedmont.
Clinopodium vulgare (wild basil; Lamiaceae)
A perennial forb with circumboreal distribution. Look for the flowers in the height of summer.
Cunila origanoides (common dittany; Lamiaceae)
A perennial native to North America, and found mostly in the mid West and mid Atlantic. It blooms in late summer.
Elephantopus caroliniana (Carolina elephant’s foot; Asteraceae)
A rather weedy-looking plant with a fascinating inflorescence. Click on the picture and look closely; you’ll see that this is actually four disk flowers, each with a five-lobed corolla. The species is native to the southeastern US (Maryland is almost as far north as it goes). It blooms in late summer.
Eutrochium purpureum (sweet joe-pye weed; Asteraceae).
The joe-pye weeds (formerly Eupatorium species) are perennials that love wet places, but this particular species tolerates drier soils and is a great native for the home garden, with dramatic heads of colorful flowers towering above most other forbs. And it attracts butterflies. Blooms in late summer.
Mentha arvensis (field mint; Lamiaceae)
Another mint-family plant with circumboreal distribution. Another late-summer bloomer.
Mimulus alatus (winged monkeyflower; Phrymaceae)
Watch for this wetland plant and its almost identical cousin M. ringens var. ringens (Allegheny monkeyflower) blooming in early to mid summer.
Monarda fistulosa (wild bergamot; Lamiaceae)
The mint family sure is represented well here. Look for it in mid summer, possibly covered in bees and butterflies.
Phlox divaricata (woodland phlox, wild blue phlox; Polemoniaceae)
As you can see this flower ranges from almost white through lighter and stronger shades of blue and purple. They bloom at about the same time as Virginia bluebells. Bluebells grow in the floodplain while this phlox grows just upland of the floodplain, in still moist (but not wet) woodland soils.
Physostegia virginiana (obedient plant; Lamiaceae)
Yet another mint family mid summer bloomer. Watch for it on rocky outcrops and gravel bars in the Potomac.
Ruellia caroliniensis (hairy wild petunia; Acanthaceae)
In Maryland this species is found mostly in the Coastal Plain; in the piedmont it’s restricted to a few sites near the Potomac River (as far as I know – please leave a comment if you know otherwise). Watch for it in late spring and early summer.
Trichostema dichotomum (forked bluecurls; Lamiaceae)
Blue or purple, or splitting the difference? Whatever. This is a most striking plant, one of those OMG finds. Well it was for me, anyway. What a lurid color. Late summer, dry soils, open areas. Yow.
Verbena hastata (blue vervain, swamp verbena, Verbenaceae)
As one of the common names suggests, you’ll find this in wetlands, blooming anywhere from late June to mid August. This is an extreme closeup; the plants are rather tall but the inflorescences rather small.
Vernonia noveboracensis (New York ironweed; Asteraceae)
All ray flowers with strongly exserted stigmas, no disk flowers. Very tall plant, wispy appearance. Likes wet soils. Blooms in mid to late summer.
Viola palmata (early blue violet, three-loved violet; Violaceae)
Violet taxonomy is in flux, and violet species can be difficult to differentiate. This one is relatively easy because of the unusual leaf shape, although even that can be highly variable. Look for it in mid spring in drier woodlands.
aka forked bluecurls,
bastard pennyroyal
Trichostema dichotomum
Lamiaceae
This mint family member will get your attention. The flower has five petals, two up and three down. But the speckled middle lower petal extends far out from the others, and the four stamens protrude and curl dramatically. The plant itself shows the usual mint family characteristics of paired leaves on a square stem.
Trichostema is from the Greek and means “hair-like stamens”, while dichotomum refers to the way the plant grows (forking in pairs, typical of the Lamiaceae).
Blue curls is a short (to 18 inches) annual plant of dry, sunny places, such as the power line clear-cut in Serpentine Barrens Conservation Park where I found dozens of specimens. They were growing in a swath of orangegrass plants, another species I only just learned about.
According to various sources, blue curls blooms from August through October. I don’t know if that’s the case in the Maryland Piedmont, but I’ll keep an eye open for them when I go back to that area.
This is one of twelve species of Trichostema native to North America; only two others can be found in this area, and both are on the Maryland DNR’s RTE (rare/threatened/endangered) list. T. dichotomum ranges from Quebec and Ontario south to Florida, Texas to the southwest, and Iowa to the northwest. It’s rare in Indiana and threatened in Michigan. In Maryland look for it in the Piedmont as well as parts of the coastal plain, the Blue Ridge, and the ridge and valley provinces.
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