Americanized Blueweed Gardens Away From Animals and Crops

Summary: Americanized blueweed gardens put animals and crops out of harm's way by isolating beautifully blue but unpalatable, virus-hosting borage family weeds.

closeup of blueweed flower: Rob Routledge, Sault College, Bugwood.org, CC BY 3.0 United States, via Forestry Images

Americanized blueweed gardens administer North African traditional antidotes for snake bites even though the non-native, weedy relatives of bluebells, borage and forget-me-nots allow in cabbage black ring spot and tobacco mosaic viruses.

The biennial herb in the Boraginaceae family of herbaceous and shrubby borage quickly becomes the invasive replacement of pasture plants despite its unpalatability to grazing livestock. Compromised crop yields and constricted species diversity confirm weediness of naturalized blueweed, nicknamed blue devil, blue thistle, cat's tails, snake flower, viper's bugloss and viper's grass. The Alberta, British Columbia and Manitoba provincial governments in Canada, the federal government in Mexico and the Washington state government in the United States disdain blueweed.

Blueweed-related forget-me-not of Asia and northern Europe, houndstongue, prickly comfrey and small bugloss of Asia and Europe and Salvation Jane of Mediterranean Europe experience blueweed-like reprisals.

Fine needle-like hairs fill the surface of the blueweed seedling's elliptical, 0.35- to 0.55-inch- (9- to 14-millimeter-) long, 0.18- to 0.28-inch- (4.5- to 7-millimeter-) wide cotyledons.

Blueweed, scientifically named Echium vulgare (common viper), grows the embryonic leaves atop stems with similarly needle-like hairs and gives bristly hairs to elliptical, first leaf stages. Alternate-arranged, lance-shaped, mature, 0.39- to 5.91-inch- (1- to 15-centimeter-) long foliage has the longest, narrowest leaves in clusters, called rosettes, at each bristly, red-green stem's base. The entire foliar surface, consistent with blueweed's overall bristliness, is covered with big, stiff hairs, each of whose bristly, enlarged base is either black or red.

Americanized blueweed gardens jumble elliptical houndstongue, linear common bugloss, oblong bluebur, forget-me-not and Salvation Jane and oval European stoneseed, prickly comfrey, small bugloss and Indian heliotrope.

Dissolved hormones and nutrients from a black, stout taproot and photosynthetic products from above-ground shoots keep blueweed leafing, flowering between May and September, fruiting and seeding.

Mature, 3.94- to 35.43-inch- (10- to 90-centimeter-) tall blueweed lets scorpioid cymes, scorpion's tail-like clusters with the oldest flowers at the tips, liven one stem side. Red-purple buds mature into blue, funnel-shaped, short-stalked flowers 0.79 inches (2 centimeters) across, with one pistil, five stamens atop five united petals and five united sepals. Blueweed, scientifically described by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (May 23, 1707-Jan. 10, 1778), needs to nestle four little fruits, called nutlets, into each perfect, regular flower.

Bluebur, forget-me-not and small bugloss, purple-blue common bugloss, Indian heliotrope, prickly comfrey and Salvation Jane, red-purple houndstongue and yellow-white European stoneseed offer Americanized blueweed gardens nutlets.

Blueweed produces as many as 2,800 angular, gray-brown, 0.08- to 0.16-inch- (2- to 4-millimeter-) long seeds, viable 11 to 33 months, in one plant's growing season.

Seeds quit germinating at 1.18-plus-inch (3-plus-centimeter) depths below the soil's surface and remaining viable after 11 months above-ground and after 33 months at 5.91-inch (15-centimeter) depths. They reap bluebur in Manitoba, Canada, forget-me-not in Connecticut and Massachusetts, prickly comfrey in California, Salvation Jane in Oregon and small bugloss in Washington weed status. They serve similar weed designations upon houndstongue in Colorado, Montana, Nevada and Wyoming, in Alberta and Saskatchewan and, with common bugloss, in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia.

Americanized blueweed gardens tether bluebells, bluebur, common bugloss, European stoneseed, forget-me-not, houndstongue, Indian heliotrope, prickly comfrey, Salvation Jane and small bugloss away from animals and crops.

blueweed colony along highway in Montréal, Québec, eastern Canada; Monday, June 18, 2012: Lubiesque, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

closeup of blueweed flower: Rob Routledge, Sault College, Bugwood.org, CC BY 3.0 United States, via Forestry Images @ http://www.forestryimages.org/browse/detail.cfm?imgnum=5474264

blueweed colony along highway in Montréal, Québec, eastern Canada; Monday, June 18, 2012: Lubiesque, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Viper's_Bugloss_colonizing_the_banks_of_a_city_highway..jpg

For further information:

Dickinson, Richard; and Royer, France. 2014. Weeds of North America. Chicago IL; London, England: The University of Chicago Press.

"Echium vulgare L." Tropicos® > Name Search.
Available @ http://www.tropicos.org/Name/4000024

Linnaeus, Carl. 1753. "3. Echium vulgare." Species Plantarum, vol. I: 139. Holmiae [Stockholm, Sweden]: Laurentii Salvii [Laurentius Salvius].
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/358158

Weakley, Alan S.; Ludwig, J. Christopher; and Townsend, John F. 2012. Flora of Virginia. Edited by Bland Crowder. Fort Worth TX: BRIT Press, Botanical Research Institute of Texas.