Family [Boraginaceae] |
status
flower
flower
inner
morph
petals
type
stem
toxicity
contact
rarity
sex
~2010, coastal footpath, Sidmouth, Devon. | Photo: © FoxyLady |
The leaves are variable in size and linear-lanceolate. The flowers have a tubular sepal cup with long narrow sepal teeth before the blue, tubular flower emerges and 5 rounded petals splay out. The anthers and stigmas remain hidden deep within the tube of the flower.
Purple Gromwell is quite different from the similarly named |
~2010, coastal footpath, Sidmouth, Devon. | Photo: © FoxyLady |
It is a perennial with rhizomes and long procumbent stolons which root at the apex. It grows erect up to 60cm high. |
~2010, coastal footpath, Sidmouth, Devon. | Photo: © FoxyLady |
The flowers are 11 to 16mm across and are purple to blue. |
~2010, coastal footpath, Sidmouth, Devon. | Photo: © FoxyLady |
The stems have longer hairs than do the leaves where they are stubbly short. |
~2010, coastal footpath, Sidmouth, Devon. | Photo: © FoxyLady |
The sepal teeth are long and linear, with gaps between them which are as wide as the teeth themselves. The sepals too are hairy. The sepal teeth reach up to or beyond the blue tubular part of the flower before the five petals splay outwards. |
~2010, coastal footpath, Sidmouth, Devon. | Photo: © FoxyLady |
The anthers and style are deep within the tubular part of the flower unseen from many angles. |
~2010, coastal footpath, Sidmouth, Devon. | Photo: © FoxyLady |
The leaves seem to have at least some slight pimples (glands?) where the short hairs emerge (centre, bottom).
The sepal cups are very short in relation to the long, narrow sepal teeth, which splay out when reaching the petals of the flowers (top, right). |
Not to be confused with :
Purple Gromwell is alone in the Aegonychon genera rather than the new Buglossoides genus for Field Gromwell (Buglossoides arvensis) where that is home alone, or the Echium genus for the four Viper's-buglosses - namely Viper's Bugloss (Echium vulgare), The nutlets (unseen above) are white with a shiny smooth surface. It is a native plant, but one which is now a very rare [RRR] and getting rarer. It is found on chalk or limestone soils in the margins of woods or in scrub, occurring very locally in South West England, in South and North Wales (your Author is not sure whether that excludes central Wales - but it can be mountainous in some regions there). It has disappeared from West Kent. It occurs scattered and naturalised elsewhere. |
Buglossoides | purpureocaerulea | ⇐ Global Aspect ⇒ |
Buglossoides (Gromwells) |
Family [Boraginaceae] |