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Viper's Bugloss

Echium vulgare

Photo by paganbride
Published on Project Noah
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53.0755, -2.10821

Field Notes

Description:

Very hairy plant, with pinkish blue flowers. Approx 30-35cm high.

Habitat:

Growing on wasteland, at the side of a rural road, close to a disused railway line.

Species ID Suggestions

Comments (7)

I have the one in the link in my amazon basket! Oh dear and now I have the Flora Britannica in there too.... :-S Hehe! Thanks for the tips! I only started looking at plants after helping out with a university project - and in the end I think he's going to quite it anyway. So I'm left with a big folder of pressed flowers and photos! I think I've found a new hobby! I wish I could do the course!
That seems like a pretty good selection. I use the Francis Rose book primarily, searching with the images first and then double checking with the key (less long winded). There's a nice pocket photographic guide that I'll buy someday: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Collins-Complete-Guide-British-photographic/dp/0007236840/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318883955&sr=1-1 and the old Roger Phillips 'Wildflowers of Britain' is useful as it lays out things month by month. Whether or not you'd find Echium vulgare under October I doubt. The plants are picked and shot in a studio so it's a bit like a herbarium pressing before drying. Some of the plants are already a little wilted (!) but it's a classic of a kind that you can probably pick up really cheap 2nd hand. One of my favourites, (but next to useless for ID!) is Flora Britannica by Richard Mabey. It tells the stories related to a good proportion of UK flora, from the myriad local common names for some things to peoples recollections of folk uses. A great read.
I must have found it on it's way out! I'm primarily using The Wild Flower Key, by Francis Rose (revised edition) Collins Wild Flowers of Britain and Europe, and a surprisingly useful Black's Medicinal Plants of Britain and Europe. Can you suggest any others?
I can't think of anything else in the UK flora that it could be with those characteristics. You can see it's been flowering for a long time and maybe the leaf rosette has shrivelled away, leaving the inflorescences looking like they're growing straight out of the ground? It's a plant that will flower as happily on a small plant as a stonking great many branched affair (It can be very handsome) Which book are you using?
Really? I'm new to plant identification, I initially thought it was, but the books I'm using picture an erect plant, with these sort of structures growing at branched intervals. The one has them emerging from the ground :-S *confused*
Why don't you think it's Viper's Bugloss? It looks like it to me.

Spotted for Missions

Photographed
PublishedOctober 17, 2011

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