What is Verbena?

Verbena is the common name for plants in the Verbenaceae family, which includes herbs, shrubs, and trees. The family includes wild and cultivated members, some of which feature fragrant, showy blossoms. In addition, some have leaves that are used in culinary applications. The family includes teak. The wild members that occur in the US are also called vervains.

Lippia citriodora or sand verbena, is a less well-known, but similar-looking species that is actually unrelated. Lemon verbena, though it, too, shares the name, and is in fact sometimes simply called verbena, is actually another different plant, Aloysia triphylla. Lemon verbena also has another common name, citronalis, which also references its lemony scent and flavor.

The cultivated verbenas and lemon verbena are used in tisanes, tea-like drinks in which herbs, flowers, or leaves, are steeped. Tea bags with verbena or vervain are sold in healthfood stores. Portions of these plants are also distilled to create oils or used as condiments. The leaves of lemon verbena may be used to season fruit salads as well as other sweet dishes ranging from sorbet to granita to cheesecake to poundcake to sangría. You can, however, occasionally find it called for in savory dishes, either in the form of herb flavored oil or in other forms, for example, verbena broth added to bouillabaisse in a recipe from Geddes Martin.

Verbena has also captured the literary imagination. Canadian novelist Lucy Maud Montgomery refers to a garden still scened with “sweet may, southern wood, lemon verbena, alyssum, petunias, marigolds, and chrysanthemums,” blooming in October in Anne of the Island. Sprigs of verbena figure importantly in Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner’s 1938 novel, The Unvanquished, which ends with a section entitled “An Odor of Verbena.” And novelist Louisa May Alcott refers to a “small posy of scarlet verbenas, white fever few, and green leaves” in An Old-Fashioned Girl.

Written by Mary Elizabeth