Five Spot Spotty Seeds - Nemophila maculata

Nemophila maculata 'Spotty' is a small annual plant with a spreading, creeping habit, showing from summer to autumn ephemeral flowers that are like large, shining bowls whose white petals are veined and spotted at the tips with intense purple-blue colour. This plant develops and evergreen, divided, fleshy, medium green foliage. Moisture-loving and tolerant of partial shade, it is perfect in damp rockeries and in window boxes and pots from which its delicate flowers can be admired up close. 

The Great American West is the cradle of Nemophila maculata, otherwise known as Five Spot or Buffalo Eyes. This small annual, sometimes biennial of the borage family, can be found in California, Oregon and in Utah. It prospers in the moist, shady valleys and humus-rich undergrowth of these regions, up to 1000 m altitude. The 'Spotty' variety from which it originates, quickly forms small, spreading, more or less prostrate clumps that do not exceed 15 to 20 cm in height and in breadth. It is distinguished by its long flowering period, lasting from July to October, in the form of ephemeral flowers that are continuously renewed above a very divided, fleshy, ciliate, medium green foliage. Its bright corollas are made up of 5 white petals arranged in a campanulate bowl-shape, each of which is marked with purple-blue veins and a rounded dot of the same dark, bright hue, located on its tip. The flowers give way to small capsules that contain blond seeds.

Five Spots are ideal groundcovers for making borders and flowering carpets in rockeries, in the front of planted beds or in the shade of trees and shrubs, in moist soils or simply for decorating basins and flower pots that can be admired up close. They can be planted with Corydalis, plants that also like cool areas and partial shade, or with Limnanthes, in the sun.

The spots that give Nemophila maculata its vernacular name have been selected but the natural evolutionary process to attract its primary pollinators which are solitary bees. Both male and female bees feed on the nectar and the females collect the pollen in order to feed their larvae.