Borage

Overview

Borage is a plant of blazing blue stars and a strong, unmistakable smell of cucumber rising from its coarse, bristly stems. It arrives fast from seed, sprawls generously, and dies after one season — but it self-sows with such enthusiasm that once planted, it is never absent. The five-petalled flowers, arranged in a perfect star around a black cone of anthers, are among the most distinctively beautiful of any herb, and have been pressed into wine, floated in summer cups, and crystallised as confectionery for as long as we have records of their use.

Botanical Notes

A hardy annual, 30–60cm, with large, rough, grey-green leaves densely covered in stiff white hairs and drooping cymes of vivid blue, occasionally white, star-shaped flowers from June to August. Native to the Mediterranean basin; now widely naturalised across temperate Europe on disturbed ground, roadsides, and waste places. Self-sows readily. The flowers contain small amounts of pyrrolizidine alkaloids but at levels considered negligible for normal consumption. The seed oil (starflower oil) is high in gamma-linolenic acid.

Lore & History

The old tag — *ego borago gaudia semper ago* — appears in medieval herbals and links the plant firmly to courage and good cheer. Borage was steeped in wine before battles and given to Crusaders departing for the Holy Land. John Gerard wrote that borage flowers "comfort the heart, purge melancholy, and quiet the frantic and lunatick person." A sprig of borage in a goblet was held to lift depression and give the drinker the heart of a lion. Whether the plant achieved this through chemistry or through the simple pleasure of its extraordinary blue is a question that did not trouble the people who used it.

Warnings