Also called Bugleweed, a name it shares with Lycopus virginicus. This is a popular groundcover at garden centers, usually in varieties with bronze or variegated leaves. The original green-leaved version is thoroughly naturalized here; it persists in old plantings for decades, but it also pops up on its own, especially at the edge of an open woodland.
The common form is blue; there is also a much rarer lavender form, as we see below. They were both blooming in May, the blue one at the edge of the woods in Mount Lebanon, the lavender in a lawn in Beechview.
Family Labiatae or Lamiaceae (Mint Family).
Gray describes the genus and the species:
AJUGA L. BUGLE WEED
Calyx 5-toothed. The large and spreading lower lip of the corolla with the middle lobe emarginate or 2-cleft. Stamens as in Teucrium, but anther- cells less confluent. (From a- privative, and xygon, Latin jugum, yoke, from the seeming absence of a yoke-fellow to the lower lip of the corolla.)
A. reptans L. Perennial, 1-2.5 dm. high, smooth or but slightly pubescent, with copious creeping stolons; leaves obovate or spatulate, sometimes sinuate, the cauline sessile, the floral approximate, subtending several sessile blue flowers. Locally in fields, Me. and Que. to s. N. V. May-July. (Nat. from Eu.)