Borago officinalis L.
borage
Annual, sometimes biennial. Stems and lvs strigosely hispid. Basal rosette lvs to c. 30 × 20 cm, lanceolate, ovate or broadly ovate, petiolate; base usually rounded or cuneate; apex acute; stem lvs much smaller, becoming sessile and slightly amplexicaul in upper stem. Pedicels to c. 3 cm long, becoming deflexed. Calyx c. 10 mm long at anthesis, elongating at fruiting; lobes linear or linear-lanceolate. Corolla limb c. 2.5 cm diam.; lobes slightly directed backwards, ovate-lanceolate or lanceolate, acute, blue, occasionally white. Staminal cone erect, c. 10 mm long, acute, black or nearly so. Nutlets 5-8 mm long, with irregular longitudinal ridges.
N.; S.: throughout.
C. Europe, Mediterranean 1870
An occasional escape from cultivation.
FL Sep-May.
The sp. is illustrated in Fig. 40. Borage has long been used medicinally and is being increasingly grown for that purpose as well as for culinary use. White-flowered plants are more often seen in cultivation than the wild. In N.Z. the much commoner herbaceous Echium spp., especially E. vulgare, are often misleadingly called borage.
