Green Figwort is a hemicryptophyte perennial monoecious herb with no basal rosette and a short rhizome, which grows to about 100 cm tall.

The stem is square in section, with broad wings at the angles, and generally rather weak, causing the plant to sprawl over vegetation rather than growing upright on its own.

The leaves are arranged in opposite pairs on petioles up to 15 mm long, with an ovate to oblong blade of about 12 x 4 cm and a fairly pointed tip, with a rounded (but not cordate) base.

The inflorescence is a panicle, essentially an extension of the main stem, that consists of opposite pairs of rather lax cymes which arise from the axils of the bracts (upper leaves).

[5] The same year, the Belgian botanist Barthélemy Charles Joseph Dumortier named a rather similar plant Scrophularia umbrosa in his Florula Belgica.

Stevens and William Allport Leighton in 1840 from a specimen in the Linnaean Herbarium that had been collected by the German botanist Jakob Friedrich Ehrhart some 50 years earlier and mis-labelled S. aquatica (= S. auriculata).

[1] There are old records of a figwort, either green- or water-figwort (accounts differ), as a casual in harbours in New York and Pennsylvania in the 19th century, but it did not persist.

[15] Other centres of distribution include the valleys of the River Yare in Norfolk, the Ribble in Yorkshire, the Eden in Cumbria and the Tweed in Scotland.

[22] The habitat of green figwort is on the edge of ditches in farmland and small streams through woods, where it trails over other plants rather than growing erect.

[10] Its Ellenberg values in Britain are L = 7, F = 9, R = 7, N = 7, and S = 0, which describe its habitat as semi-open, very wet, with a neutral pH and moderate fertility; but no salt.

[25] In Britain, the beetles Longitarsus agilis and L. nigrofasciatus, and the sawfly Tenthredo scrophulariae are phytophagous on the leaves, whereas Cionus hortulanus eats the fruits and flowers as well.