Verbena tenera (South American mock vervain)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Verbena tenera, photographed by Simone M — fig. a Simone M, CC0 1.0 / 2022-05-12 / obs. 197083675

Verbena tenera, photographed by kcthetc1 — fig. b kcthetc1, CC0 1.0 / obs. 184184459

Verbena tenera, photographed by Leila Dasher — fig. c Leila Dasher, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 184061827

Verbena tenera, photographed by Eric Knight — fig. d Eric Knight, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 129064529

Verbena tenera, photographed by redrovertracy — fig. e redrovertracy, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 126831396

Verbena tenera, photographed by sudomir — fig. f sudomir, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 117292138

Verbena tenera, photographed by Lauren McLaurin — fig. g Lauren McLaurin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 116125624

Verbena tenera, photographed by etw — fig. h etw, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 64670885

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 6 botanical countries

Native distribution of Verbena tenera, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Argentina Northeast	AGE	SOUTHERN AMERICA
Argentina Northwest	AGW
Brazil South	BZS
Brazil Southeast	BZL
Paraguay	PAR
Uruguay	URU

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 53 in flower of 54 examined

100%

86%

100%

Proportion of examined Verbena tenera in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	1	1	too few examined
Feb	1	1	too few examined
Mar	2	2	too few examined
Apr	5	5	100%	57% to 100%
May	3	3	too few examined
Jun	2	2	too few examined
Jul	0	0	too few examined
Aug	6	7	86%	49% to 97%
Sep	9	9	100%	70% to 100%
Oct	13	13	100%	77% to 100%
Nov	6	6	100%	61% to 100%
Dec	5	5	100%	57% to 100%

Peak flowering in Apr. Each bar is the share of Verbena tenera observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 53 of 54 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 6 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 17 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

Glandularia pulchella (Sweet) Tronc.
Glandularia pulchella var. clavellata Tronc.
Glandularia pulchella var. gracilior Tronc.
Glandularia tenera (Spreng.) Cabrera
Shuttleworthia pulchella (Sweet) Meisn.
Shuttleworthia tenera (Spreng.) Walp.
Verbena erinoides var. alba Benary ex Wittm.
Verbena geraniifolia J.Harrison
Verbena mahonetii E.Vilm.
Verbena pulchella Sweet
Verbena pulchella var. clavellata (Tronc.) Shinners
Verbena pulchella var. gracilior (Tronc.) Shinners
Verbena santiaguensis f. albiflora Moldenke
Verbena tenera f. albiflora (Kuntze) Moldenke
Verbena tenera var. albiflora Kuntze
Verbena tenuisecta f. alba (Benary ex Wittm.) Moldenke
Verbena tenuisecta var. glabrata Moldenke

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol GLPU3. public domain. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.