Without really intending it I seem to be continuing with the planting of semi wild plants in my garden. Today it is Jamaican Vervain. I happened to notice a group of baby plants growing by the roadside while I was walking around my community. I decided to pull a few up and see if I could get them going in my yard. They got put in water for a few hours to recover after I got home and then I potted them up up. Some weeks later I planted them out in the garden....some in full sun and some in the shade. All four plants are still doing well after a few months.
Jamaican Vervain grows wild here in low land pastures and along country roads. I have often heard that the Puerto Ricans brought to Hawaii to work in the sugar plantations brought this plant with them for medicinal use. However google and biologists say that Jamaican Vervain had already arrived in Hawaii before the Puerto Ricans arrived around 1900. Although it is not a spectacular flowering plant I have always had a soft spot for it after seeing all the butterflies gathering around it in Samoa. I do not see the butterflies being attracted to it so much here in Hawaii, but it is a plant that I have seen in tropical butterfly gardens in many countries.
Jamaican Vervain is native to the Caribbean area of the world where it is used medicinally in various ways for several different health problems. It has attractive green saw-tooth edged leaves and long green spikes that produce tiny 1/4" blue flowers that provide nectar for butterflies and other insects. It can be a sprawling low shrubby plant when old so it may be time then to replace with a younger plant. The old flower spikes turn brown and can be trimmed off. The plant is not fussy about soils and full sun. In Hawaii it is a perennial with flowers in the summer.
Aloha
