Rickert Nature Preserve

Teucrium Canadense
Canada Germander

• Family: Mint (Lamiaceae)
• Flowering: June-September.
• Field Marks: Only one lip of the flower is developed in this species, distinguishing it from all other mints.
• Habitat: Moist woods, along streams, in meadows.
• Habit: Perennial herb with long, slender rhizomes.
• Stems: Erect, branched or rarely unbranched, hairy, up to 4 feet tall.
• Leaves: Opposite, simple, lanceolate to narrowly ovate, pointed at the tip, tapering to or rounded at the base, round-toothed.
• Flowers: Many crowded in terminal spikes, the spikes up to 6 inches long, each flower purplish, subtended by a short, narrow bract.
• Sepals: 5, green, united below, asymmetrical.
• Petals: 5, asymmetrical, the upper lip absent, the lower lip 3-lobed, up to 1/2 inch long, purplish.
• Stamens: 4, protruding beyond the petals.
• Pistils: Ovary superior, 4-lobed.
• Fruits: Nutlets 4, yellow-brown, veiny, ellipsoid, up to 1/10 inch long.

Used by Chippewa Indians as a colic medicine.