Sweet-Scented Joe Pye Weed
Eupatorium purpureum
This plant is herbaceous, with a perennial, horizontal, woody caudex, with many long, dark-brown fibers, which send up one or more solid, glabrous, green, sometimes purplish stems, 5 or 6 feet in height, with a purple band at the joints, about an inch broad. The leaves are from 3 to 6 in a whorl about 6 inches apart, oblong-ovate, or lanceolate, pointed, rugosely or feather-veined, coarsely serrate, slightly scabrous, with a soft pubescence beneath along the mid-vein and veinlets, thin, soft, borne on petioles an inch long, and from 8 to 12 inches long, by 3 or 4 inches wide. The flowers are all tubular, purple or pinkish-purple, varying to whitish, and consist of numerous florets included in an 8-leaved calyx. The heads are in lax, very dense and compound corymbs of a cylindrical form, and from 5 to 10-flowered