Scientific name: Scrophularia auriculata L.
Common name: Water Figwort
Description
Habit: A hairless perennial, to 1.2 m high.
Stems: Erect, square and distinctly winged, with smooth rhizome, without tuber-like swellings.
Leaves: Opposite, undivided, obtuse, crenate or bluntly toothed, sometimes with small leaflet-like lobes at the base.
Flowers: Purplish-brown, zygomorphic, hermaphrodite, in terminal panicles; calyx of 5 fused sepals, with 5 rounded lobes, sepals rounded and with membranous margin about 1 mm wide; corolla of 5 petals fused into short tube and 5 nearly equal lobes that are obscurely organised into 2 lips, upper lip 2-lobed, lower lip 3-lobed; stamens 4 and 1 sterile, borne on corolla tube; ovary superior, 2-celled, style 1.
Fruits: A capsule, almost globular.
Habitat: Roadsides, waste ground, walls, hedges, wood-margins.Distribution: Locally frequent near Galway, rather rare elsewhere.
Native status: Native
Of conservation interest: No