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Northeast Wetland Flora

Field Office Guide to Plant Species

Large-seed Forget-me-not
Myosotis scorpioides L.

JPG -- Species Photo JPG -- Distribution Map

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.

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Page Last Modified: Saturday, 02-Feb-2013 06:17:31 EST
Menlo Park, CA [caww54]