Hesperis matronalis (Dame's Rocket) - photos and description

 

 

 

 

 

 

General: Tall perennials with stout stems, branching above, and showy, fragrant, pinkish-purple flowers. Stems pubescent.

Flowers: Flowers many, in racemes, flowers measured to 20 mm wide.

Fruit: Pods are linear, cylindrical in profile, ascending. We measured a pod at 16 mm long by just under 1 mm wide.

Leaves: Leaves lanceolate to ovate, dentate, alternate, have small petioles on lower stem, to sessile on upper stem. Leaf highlighted in photo above was 12 cm long by 5 cm wide. Leaf bottom and top pubescent with short hairs.

Height: Height listed in Budd's Flora to 100 cm, we measured plants to 125 cm tall.

Habitat: Waste ground, edges of woods, moist meadows.

Abundance: Common.

Origin: Introduced.

When and where photographed: Took the above photos June 25th in an old farm property full of brome grass, about 250 km west of our home in Regina, SK.