From Flora of Indiana (1940) by Charles C. Deam

About 1925 Mr. Walter Neff and Mrs. Ivy Neff discovered this species as a common weed in the Cedarville Cemetery and nearby pastures and roadside in Carroll County, about two or two and a half miles southwest of Burnettsville. Mrs. Neff has written of the discovery and described the plant (Amer. Bot. 36: 85-87. 1930). At that time the name was still in controversy. I visited this colony in 1929 and found that it formed an almost complete stand in a pasture of two to three acres and that it was scattered in pasture fields for a distance of about three miles. I sent specimens collected from this colony to Pennell who sent them to Murbeck for determination. Murbeck, in 1936, identified them as Verbascum phlomoides L. In 1937 I found this mullein common along an east and west road two miles north of Rochester, Fulton County and in several places along the Tippecanoe River south of Talma.

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Indiana Coefficient of Conservatism: C = null, non-native

Wetland Indicator Status: FACU

Stems 5-12+ dm; lvs oblong to lance-ovate or ovate- oblanceolate, toothed, tomentose on both sides but only thinly so above, sessile, not decurrent or only very shortly so; infl simple or sometimes branched, at first dense and spike-like, at full maturity usually elongating and exposing the axis between the fl-clusters; cor 2.5-3.5 cm wide; stigma spatulate, decurrent on the style; otherwise much like no. 5 [Verbascum thapsus L.]; 2n=32, 34. Native of Europe, found here and there in our range as a weed.

Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.

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