[2] It grows upright, with thick, sharply square, succulent stems up to 150 cm tall from a horizontal rootstock.

Its leaves are opposite, ovate at the base and lanceolate at the tip, all having toothed margins.

The flowers are in loose cymes in oblong or pyramidal panicles.

[3] Seed identification of Scrophularia nodosa has been made from sub-stage IIIa of the Hoxnian at Clacton in Essex, from the Middle Pleistocene.

[4] The plant was thought, by the doctrine of signatures, to be able to cure the throat disease scrofula because of the throat-like shape of its flowers.