Rose verbena is commonly and reliably one of our early-blooming spring wildflowers. I found these last weekend, and expect we’ll see many more patches flowering in the coming days and weeks.
After Nuttall arrived in Fort Smith on April 24, 1819, he apparently took a day to rest. But on April 26 he was back out botanizing: “I took a walk about five miles up the banks of the Pottoe, and found my labour well repayed by the discovery of several new or undescribed plants.” (:157)
[We too will venture several miles up the Poteau from the old fort on April 27 and May 17, 2019 on our trips.]
The list of species that Nuttall mentions here included Verbena aubletia, which is a name for rose verbena, but this was neither a new or nor undescribed species. I am still trying to find the right reference to understand the taxonomic story, but the Flora of Oklahoma (2018) gives the name as Glandularia canadensis (L.) Nutt. Originally named by Linnaeus as species of Verbena, apparently Nuttall decided it belonged in Glandularia. He did the same with a more westernly-distributed species, Glandularia bipinnatifida (Nutt.) Nutt., of which he was also the original author. The Glandularia species are a chunk of Verbena separated by a set of consistently shared traits, but apparently many or most taxonomists continued to treat them as Verbena until recently, when someone decided that Nuttall was right.
Glandularia canadensis is but one of the hundreds of species in Oklahoma and Arkansas either named by Nuttall or named for him by others.
With luck it will still be in bloom on April 27.
We hope to see you then!
