Plant of the Week: Borage
Friday April 18, 2008
Why is it so many stunning flowers have such coarse names? Borage sounds like something your mother has to force you to eat. In reality, borage is a gorgeous blue flower with the slight flavor of cucumbers. It grows easily from seed and blooms for month. And it’s equally at home in the flower, herb or vegetable garden. Shouldn’t a plant like that have a name like sapphire gem or sky blue? Don’t let the pedestrian name keep you from growing borage in your garden. Here are some tips to get you started.
Photo: © Marie Iannotti (2008) licensed to About.com, Inc.
Comments
I’ve heard that Borage is also known as Starflower in English, which I think is a much more suitable name.
In Swedish (my native tongue) it’s called ‘gurkört’ which directly translated simply means cucumber(gurk)-herb(ört) which is practical way to describe it but not much prettier.
Some plants get no respect. I can appreciate giving plants practical names, but names like lungwort and sneezeweed just don’t have any poetry, do they.