Veronica americana

American brooklime

Family: Plantaginaceae · Type: perennial · Native

American brooklime is a California native perennial found in the California Floristic Province, Great Basin, and Desert Mountains in moist to wet habitats including springs, slow streams, meadows, and lakeshores at elevations up to 3,300 meters. Flowering from May to August, this plant produces violet-blue flowers with dark lines in small clusters, each blossom 7 to 10 millimeters long. Growing with decumbent stems 5 to 60 centimeters tall that root at lower nodes and branch freely, it spreads through underground rhizomes. Its leaves are lance-shaped to oval, 5 to 50 millimeters long with slightly serrated edges and pointed tips. The fruit is small and nearly round, about 3 to 4 millimeters in diameter.

Habitat: Common. Moist to wet soil, springs, slow streams, meadows, lakeshores

Bloom period: May-Aug

Elevation: < 3300 m

Bioregions: CA-FP, GB, DMtns (uncommon)

California counties: Lake, Fresno, Kern, Alpine, Tulare, San Francisco, San Bernardino, Sonoma, Siskiyou, Riverside, Ventura, San Mateo, Trinity, Mendocino, Tehama, Madera, Mono, Lassen, Humboldt, Marin, Inyo, Monterey, Tuolumne, Alameda, Mariposa, Plumas, Modoc, Shasta, Butte, Napa, Placer, Del Norte, Glenn, Los Angeles, Santa Clara, San Luis Obispo, Sierra, El Dorado, Calaveras, Yuba, Nevada, Contra Costa, Santa Cruz, Colusa, Santa Barbara, Stanislaus, San Joaquin, Amador

Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.