Two stamened, spikes very long, fleshy, naked; leaves spatulate-ovate, serrate, stem rough haired.
Stem from two to four feet high, very much branched and diffused, suffrutescent at the base; stem and branches rough with hairs. Leaves at the joints opposite, on short footstalks, ovate, obtuse, or acute, serrate, gradually and for a considerable length attenuated at the base. From the axil between two opposite branches comes forth a fleshy spike, a foot long, unequally cylindrical, stiff and green; the flowers, thick set round it, blow in succession, beginning at the bottom, very few together, violet coloured, with the throat and long slender incurved tube white; anther sulphur-coloured; after the corolla is fallen the style stands out of the spike. After each flower follows in a greenish brown calyx or husk, one seed or rather husk, something like wheat in shape and colour, only smaller, and easily divisible into two, both being close covered with the same membrane; they are in a cavity on the side of the spike, and are covered with three sharp, brownish, membranous leaves. This plant is much used in clysters in the belly-ache, and in poultices with onions for the dropsy, as also the decoction. It is used in ulcers beaten and laid on as a poultice.—Sloane and Jacquin. The expressed juice of the plant, dose one or two table spoonfuls, a cooling purge for children in fevers and worms. […] Sloane says, that a decoction of it with spikenard (ballota suaveolens) cures dropsies. Hughes says that vervain is a powerful deobstruent; that a table-spoonful of the juice, for four successive mornings, is more effectual in bringing on the catamenia than any other medicine.—Med. Ass. This plant is poisonous to sheep. Its virtues as a purifier of the blood are well known, even when used as tea. The expressed juice given with salt is an excellent purge; and infused in rum is said to drive out the yaws, and other impurities of the blood*; and, being of a purgative quality, prevents the bad effects on the stomach, which the use of any bitter, too long continued, is apt to produce. Its eruptive quality is much quickened by adding a little flour of brimstone to it. Vervain and ground ivy tea are often beneficial in hectic fever.
* If a sore has the appearance of proceeding from the yaws, it is said that by dressing it with the leaves of this plant, which gives considerable pain at first, it may be discovered; for when the pain has subsided, if it proceed from the yaws the sore will be of a whitish colour, but if not, it will appear red.
One sentence omitted: it demeans the people it describes. The Latin synonyms from Sloane and Browne at the head of the species are also left out.