Common Name: Mulleins
Synonyms: Celsia APNI*
Description: Perennial or more usually biennial [or rarely annual] herbs; forming a basal rosette in first year and with an erect stout flowering stem in the second year.
Leaves alternate, forming a basal rosette, scattered and becoming smaller up stem.
Flowers many in terminal racemes, spikes or panicles; bracteoles absent or sometimes present. Sepals 5, free, equal or slightly unequal, free or fused at the very base. Corolla rotate, with 5 widely spreading nearly equal lobes. Stamens 5, [or 4 with or without a staminode], upper [2 or] 3 with anthers reniform and transversely inserted, the lower pair similar or with elongated anthers decurrent along the filament, with filaments often villous and anthers 1-locular.
Capsule ovoid to globose, septicidal; seeds numerous.
Distribution and occurrence: World: c. 350 species, in temperate Eurasia. Australia: 5 species (naturalized), all States except N.T.
Text by W. R. Barker & G. J. Harden
Taxon concept:
| | Key to the species | |
| 1 | Leaves grey to whitish or yellowish, woolly to tomentose, or sometimes floccose, densely stellate hairy | 2 |
| Leaves more or less green, more or less glabrous or sparsely hairy | 3 |
| 2 | Inflorescence dense, the flowers and fruits closely packed; basal leaves entire or crenate | Verbascum thapsus |
| Inflorescence lax with flowers and fruits well-separated; basal leaves more or less pandurate, lobes few and rounded
Back to 1 | Verbascum sinuatum |
| 3 | Flowering and fruiting pedicels less than 10 mm long, usually 2–5 mm long and much shorter than subtending bracts; 1–5 pedicels at each node; basal leaves regularly toothed, sparsely hairy to more or less glabrous | Verbascum virgatum |
| Flowering and fruiting pedicels 10–25 mm long, much longer than subtending bracts; 1 pedicel at each node; basal leaves lobed to toothed, glabrous or almost so
Back to 1 | Verbascum blattaria |
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