Echium vulgare

Echium vulgare, commonly known as Viper's Bugloss or sometimes Blueweed, is a biennial plant in our flora appreciated for the beauty of its flowering as well as its qualities as a nectar-bearing and honey-bearing plant. Spontaneous in dry, even rocky and poor soils, it blooms in summer along roadsides and in arid places, in full sun. Its floral spikes, quite spectacular, are adorned with tiny flowers of changing colours, in shades of pink, blue, and purple with a vibrant hue. The plant, entirely covered with fine spines, first produces a rosette of leaves before flowering in the second year. The Viper's Bugloss finds its place and self-seeds spontaneously in embankments, rockeries, borders, and natural-inspired flower beds.

Echium vulgare is native to warm and dry regions of Europe, Asia, and North Africa. This plant, belonging to the borage family, forms a modest rosette close to the ground in the first year, composed of elongated leaves, 10 to 15cm (4 to 6in) long, green, dotted with light green and covered with very fine spines, surrounding a dormant bud. This vegetation persists in winter. In the following spring, the rosette expands. Depending on the climate, flowering may only occur after 3 years. In the southern half of our country, the plant usually blooms in the second year, as early as late spring. Flowering occurs from June to August, in the form of branched spikes visible from afar, reaching a height of 40-50cm (16-20in). They are adorned with fine and formidable, transparent spines that easily penetrate the skin and remain attached to it. It is impossible not to notice them, even when surrounded by greenery or dried foliage. This is probably due to the fact that pink buds coexist with fully bloomed flowers of vibrant blue, themselves alongside the purple of faded flowers. This plant self-seeds abundantly in light and rather dry soil. In Europe, Viper's Bugloss feeds the caterpillar of the moth called Ethmia bipunctella.

The Viper's Bugloss can be sown in rockeries, borders, at the front of flower beds, and in flower meadows, in well-drained soil, especially in arid areas in summer. It can be associated in natural areas with Love-in-a-Mist, Perennial Flax, Ammi, Sainfoin, Alfalfa, Corniculate Bird's-foot Trefoil, Phacelia, and Tuberous Vetchling. This plant is remarkably honey-bearing and has the ability to continuously produce nectar, thus providing this precious source of food to pollinating insects for long weeks. The honey of bees that have fed on Echium has sought-after qualities: a beautiful amber color, a low tendency to crystallize, a sweet and floral fragrance.