Flower:

Open, branching clusters oppositely attached at the top of the stem and arising from upper leaf axils. Flowers are ¼ to 1/3 inch long, about ¼ inch across, tubular with a round base and 5 rounded lobes. The 2 upper lobes are longest, extend straight out and are shiny reddish brown to reddish green on the outside. A lower lobe folds down and is green or reddish. 4 stout, yellow stamens and a single slender, blunt-tipped style poke out of the mouth near the lower lobe, and a sterile stamen hugs the inside of the upper lobes. The sterile stamen is mostly dark purple with a narrow tip, usually longer than wide.

Flower stalks are variously covered in dark-tipped glandular hairs. Sepals have 5 triangular lobes.

Leaves and stems:

Leaves are up to 7 inches long and 3½ inches wide, egg to heart-shaped, coarsely toothed to serrated around the edges, have a sharply pointed tip, and are hairless except for short, sparse hairs on the veins on the underside.

Leaf stalks are up to 2½ inches long, up to half the length of the leaf blade, hairless to sparsely hairy, and grooved down the length but without wings along the edges.  Attachment is opposite and there are sometimes smaller leaves in the axils. The stem is erect, stout, hairless to minutely hairy, branching in the upper plant, and 4-sided with rounded angles and the sides distinctly grooved.

Fruit:

Fruit is a dull brown, teardrop-shaped capsule about ¼ inch long. Inside are numerous tiny brownish-black seeds. When ripe the capsule splits in 2.

Notes:

This is not a showy flower but is a pollinator magnet. We have several in the backyard garden and they are constantly covered in a variety of bees, wasps, flies, ants, and even hummingbirds from July into September. It also produces copious amounts of seed so does take some maintenance to prevent too much of a good thing, but the seedlings are easy to manage with a little hoeing early in the season. The flowers are much the same as the related Lance-leaf Figwort (Scrophularia lanceolata), which has a number of distinguishing characteristics: less heavily branched; starts blooming a month or so earlier; has a green sterile stamen usually with a fan-shaped tip that is wider than long; minute, pale-tipped glandular hairs; mostly flat sides on the angled stem; leaves that do not have heart-shaped bases; and shorter leaf stalks (up to 1¼ inch) that are narrowly winged.