PlantKey Open ecological atlas
Planner
Home / Browse / Stachytarpheta / Nettleleaf Velvetberry
iNaturalist — CC, credited & licensed per image
Verbenaceae family

Nettleleaf Velvetberry Stachytarpheta urticifolia

Nettleleaf Velvetberry is an introduced perennial shrub, found in Hawaii, the lower 48 states, and the Pacific Basin. It grows to 2.0 ft.

⚠ Invasive here — plant a native instead USDA + GBIF

Nettleleaf Velvetberry is flagged invasive in the U.S. These natives fill a similar niche — same growth habit, bloom season, height, and region — so you keep the look and feed local wildlife instead of spreading a problem.

Indian Blanket
Native
Indian Blanket
Gaillardia pulchella
●●●○○
Salt Heliotrope
Native
Salt Heliotrope
Heliotropium curassavicum
●●●●○
American Black Nightshade
Native
American Black Nightshade
Solanum americanum
●●●○○
Caesarweed
Native
Caesarweed
Urena lobata
●●●○○
Matched on growth habit · bloom months · mature height · shared U.S. range (USDA + GBIF) — a starting point, not a prescription.

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
Cold hardiness (derived) — Hardiness
Hardiness
≥ zone 11 derived from its U.S. range
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Height · Foliage
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
Height
2.0 ft
Lifespan
Perennial
Foliage
Evergreen broadleaf
In the garden
Herb layer — Sits in the herb of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
derived roles
Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
❧ Caterpillar hosts Documented caterpillar host

Recorded feeding on Stachytarpheta in North America, including:

Junonia evarete · Tropical Buckeye Penthesilea sacculalis · snout moth
Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).
✦ Bees 1 bee visitor

1 native & managed bee species is documented visiting Nettleleaf Velvetberry :

Megachile lanata · Wooly Wall Bee
Visitor records (observations, not exhaustive) from Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI →
Wildlife & visitors 4 nectaring

Open records of who else uses Nettleleaf Velvetberry — a generalist food-web signal, kept separate from the keystone Ecological Value.

4 adult butterfly & moth species are recorded nectaring at its flowers:

Badamia exclamationis · Brown Awl Eurema hecabe Catopsilia pomona Ideopsis similis
Interaction records (observations, not exhaustive) from GloBI → (CC0). Counts are distinct species; names are the most-recorded. Common names from Wikidata (CC0).
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
How we know this (2) Methods & honest limits
Leaf build Direct fact

We read each species’ measured specific leaf area (leaf area per unit dry weight) from the Global Spectrum dataset and band it: thin & fast (high SLA), medium, or thick & tough (low SLA). The global median is about 10 mm²/mg.

Honest limits: A species-mean from pooled measurements — individual plants vary with light and site. A broad strategy signal, not a precise per-plant figure.

Díaz, S. et al. (2022) The global spectrum of plant form and function: enhanced species-level trait dataset. Scientific Data 9:755.
Photosynthesis Direct fact

A recorded categorical fact: each species is tagged C3 (standard), C4 (heat/water-efficient) or CAM (succulent, night-time CO₂ uptake) — or a facultative combination. We only show a trait card for the noteworthy C4/CAM cases; C3 is the unremarkable majority, kept in the data but not surfaced as a card.

Kattge, J. et al. TRY plant trait database — Categorical Traits Dataset (2012).
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →
Sources for this entry (17) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[05] Invasive / introduced status — US-RIIS v2.0 (USGS)
[07] Ecological value — GloBI
[10] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[11] Photosynthetic pathway — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[12] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[13] Wildlife & visitors — GloBI — Global Biotic Interactions (CC0)
[15] Flower-visitor value (derived) — Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI
[16] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
[17] County range — GBIF Open Data — open-licensed occurrences (CC0/CC-BY) → county
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

Citation

Loading…

BibTeX 
Loading…