Verbena bonariensis? Though I'd expect it to be taller than picture #2 ... mine got about 4 ft high. It's supposed to be a reseeder, but didn't for me.

I looked at that one when I was trying to find a name myself, but none of the pics I found online showed the leaves close up, and the big pics made the leaves look extremely narrow, like grass blades.

There is a thin bladed plant in that middle pic you weren't supposed to notice, lol, it's crabgrass!

I think it's the "stick verbena", too.

If this is the first year you've grown it, maybe it just hasn't really taken off yet, or maybe the drought has discouraged it.

It'll get about 4' or 5' tall in future years, & butterflies really love it.

To me, it looks like Tuber vervain (Verbena rigida).
Jim

I'm still stumped. From what I read, verbena bonariensis has a rosette of leaves near the base of the plant, and few leaves up the stalk. This is just opposite. Almost no leaves at the base, and leaves all the way up, but the leaves do look like all the pics on the websites.

Verbena rigida, has leaves all the way up, but the pictures show them more jagged than the ones on my plant which are more evenly and smoothly serrated. The height of mine more closely matches this 12-18 inches, but mine is a spreading clump and from all I see on the websites, this grows with just a few branches of the main stalk.