Northeast Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Myosotis scorpioides L.
- Family: Borage (Boraginaceae)
- Flowering: May-October
- Field Marks: This species has a blue flower with a yellow center and an angular stem. The hairs on the sepals are not glandular.
- Habitat: Wet soil.
- Habit: Perennial herb with fibrous roots.
- Stems: Spreading to ascending, angular, somewhat fleshy, branched, finely hairy, up to 2 feet long.
- Leaves: Alternate, simple, narrowly oblong to lanceolate, rounded at the tip, tapering to the sessile base, without teeth, rough-hairy, up to 3 inches long.
- Flowers: Several in often 1-sided racemes, the racemes up to 8 inches long; none of the flowers subtended by bracts; each flower blue with a yellow center, on slender, finely hairy stalks up to 1/4 inch long.
- Sepals: 5, united below to form a short tube, green, up to 1/4 inch long, the lobes shorter than the tube, hairy but not glandular.
- Petals: 5, united below, blue, the lobes up to nearly 1/2 inch long.
- Stamens: 5, not exserted beyond the petals.
- Pistils: Ovary superior, 4-lobed; style 1.
- Fruits: Nutlets in clusters of 4, more or less flattened.
- Notes: This species is an introduction from Europe.
Previous Species -- Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica)
Return to Species List -- Group 8
Next Species -- American Lotus (Nelumbo lutea)
