Borage Blossoms

Soft blue borage blossoms began opening yesterday, just one or two, but by today there were six or more on some plants, and opening all through the day. I’ve not grown this plant before but always loved the flowers and wanted its powers as a pollinator plant to grow near my garden.

Though borage is native to the Mediterranean area it grows well just about everywhere. It’s a known pollinator, those blossoms highly attractive to bees especially, blooming from June to September concurrent with the height of gardening season. When the first blossoms opened yesterday there were already bees on them. Today the plants were buzzing with bumblebees and honey bees. The plant is enthusiastic as it grows, after the seedling stage when they reached about six inches tall they just took off with a thick main stem and large oblong leaves with lots of fuzzy hairs all over them.

In Europe various parts of the plants are used as salad or cooking greens and the flowers are said to have a sweet flavor. The seeds are used for borage seed oil.

I’m looking forward to a few interesting salads, lots of photos and possibly some paintings this summer.

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