Ajuga reptans L.
bugle
Perennial; vegetative shoots ± procumbent and forming long, glabrous, aerial stolons. Lvs with winged petioles 1-2 cm long. Lamina 1.5-5 × 0.7-3 cm, broad-elliptic to elliptic-obovate or oblong, glabrous or becoming so, undulate or shallowly and broadly crenate; apex obtuse or rounded. Flowering stems to c. 25 cm tall, erect, densely hairy on 2 sides. Lower bracts similar to lvs but sessile and entire, tinged blue. Verticels crowded towards apex, c. 6-flowered. Calyx 4-5 mm long; teeth exceeding tube, lanceolate to elliptic, purplish, acute, with long white cilia. Corolla 13-17 mm long, blue with darker veins; tube > calyx, hairy outside; upper lip emarginate. Filaments glandular-puberulent, blue. Style blue. Nutlets not seen.
N.; S.: sporadic throughout, but nowhere extensively naturalised.
Temperate Eurasia, N. Africa 1958
Moist, shady places.
FL Jan-Dec.
Bugle is a cultivation escape which is a very common rock garden and ground cover plant. The purple-leaved cv. 'Atropurpurea' is very common in cultivation and, more rarely, cvs with white or pink fls are grown; all wild specimens examined had green lvs and blue fls.
