_Myosotis scorpioides (M. palustris)_
_Flowers_--Pure blue, pinkish, or white, with yellow eye; flat, 5-lobed,
borne in many-flowered, long, often 1-sided racemes. Calyx 5-cleft; the
lobes narrow, spreading, erect, and open in fruit; 5 stamens inserted on
corolla tube; style thread-like; ovary 4-celled. _Stem:_ Low, branching,
leafy, slender, hairy, partially reclining. _Leaves:_ (_Myosotis_ =
mouse-ear) oblong, alternate, seated on stem; hairy. _Fruit:_ Nutlets,
angled and keeled on inner side.
_Preferred Habitat_--Escaped from gardens to brooksides, marshes, and
low meadows.
_Flowering Season_--May-July.
_Distribution_--Native of Europe and Asia, now rapidly spreading from
Nova Scotia southward to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and beyond.
How rare a color blue must have been originally among our flora is
evident from the majority of blue and purple flowers that, although now
abundant here and so perfectly at home, are really quite recent
immigrants from Europe and Asia. But our dryer, hotter climate never
brings to the perfection attained in England
“The sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.”
Tennyson thus ignores the melancholy association of the flower in the
popular legend which tells how a lover, when trying to gather some of
these blossoms for his sweetheart, fell into a deep pool, and threw a
bunch on the bank, calling out, as he sank forever from her sight,
“Forget me not.” Another dismal myth sends its hero forth seeking hidden
treasure caves in a mountain, under the guidance of a fairy. He fills
his pockets with gold, but not heeding the fairy’s warning to “forget
not the best”--_i.e._, the myosotis--he is crushed by the closing
together of the mountain. Happiest of all is the folk-tale of the
Persians, as told by their poet Shiraz: “It was in the golden morning of
the early world, when an angel sat weeping outside the closed gates of
Paradise. He had fallen from his high estate through loving a daughter
of earth, nor was he permitted to enter again until she whom he loved
had planted the flowers of the forget-me-not in every corner of the
world. He returned to earth and assisted her, and together they went
hand in hand. When their task was ended, they entered Paradise together,
for the fair woman, without tasting the bitterness of death, became
immortal like the angel whose love her beauty had won when she sat by
the river twining forget-me-nots in her hair.”
It was the golden ring around the forget-me-not’s centre that first led
Sprengel to believe the conspicuous markings at the entrance of many
flowers served as pathfinders to insects. This golden circle also
shelters the nectar from rain, and indicates to the fly or bee just
where it must probe between stigma and anthers to touch them with
opposite sides of its tongue. Since it may probe from any point of the
circle, it is quite likely that the side of the tongue that touched a
pollen-laden anther in one flower will touch the stigma in the next
one visited, and so cross-fertilize it. But forget-me-nots are not
wholly dependent on insects. When these fail, a fully mature flower is
still able to set fertile seed by shedding its own pollen directly on
the stigma.
Viper’s Bugloss; Blue-weed; Viper’s Herb or Grass; Snake-flower; Blue
Thistle; Blue Devil
_Echium vulgare_
_Flowers_--Bright blue, afterward reddish purple, pink in the bud,
numerous, clustered on short, 1-sided curved spikes rolled up at first,
and straightening out as flowers expand. Calyx deeply 5-cleft; corolla 1
in. long or less, funnel form, the 5 lobes unequal, acute; 5 stamens
inserted on corolla tube, the filaments spreading below, and united
above into slender appendage, the anthers forming a cone; 1 pistil with
2 stigmas. _Stem:_ 1 to 2 1/2 ft. high; bristly-hairy, erect, spotted.
_Leaves:_ Hairy, rough, oblong to lance-shaped, alternate, seated on
stem, except at base of plant.
_Preferred Habitat_--Dry fields, waste places, roadsides
_Flowering Season_--June-July.
_Distribution_--New Brunswick to Virginia, westward to Nebraska;
Europe and Asia.
Years ago, when simple folk believed God had marked plants with some
sign to indicate the special use for which each was intended, they
regarded the spotted stem of the bugloss, and its seeds shaped like a
serpent’s head, as certain indications that the herb would cure snake
bites. Indeed, the genus takes its name from _Echis_, the Greek viper.