Lycopsis arvensis – September 16th 2024 – (Bugloss)

Nine years ago we decided to turn a lawn into a vegetable plot. The lawn had been there for a long time – at least 10 years and probably much longer. Our soil on the Ayrshire coast is light and sandy, and we were delighted with the result of our spadework: very few ‘weeds’ emerged from the new bed in the following spring. But there was a conspicuous rash of one species – seedlings that were dark green and bristly. About 50 sprang up in one patch, and I didn’t know what they could be. They turned out to be Bugloss. Not the familiar Viper’s Bugloss (which arrived later) but the plant that’s simply called Bugloss, although some say Small Bugloss and others say Annual Bugloss. In some books they call it Anthusa arvensis but in others it is Lycopsis arvensis. Here we follow Stace’s 2019 New Flora of the British Isles and call it Lycopsis arvensis. 

Four members of the Boraginaceae with examples of their pollinators. From left to right: Comfrey, Borage, Bugloss, Green Alkanet. Attribution: Unknown author – John Curtis’s 1824 classic work called British Entomology. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2260729

Bugloss, Lycopsis arvensis, belongs to the Boraginaceae, the Family of Forget-me-nots and Comfries. The plant can be up to 40 cm tall, multi-stemmed, erect at first but then sprawling. It has the familiar blue flowers and hairiness of its relatives, except this one has hairs that are best described as bristles. It is indeed a very bristly plant, so I handle it only with gloved hands.

Entangled sprawling weeds in the Ayrshire garden. In the centre is Bugloss, Lycopsis arvensis. In the top-left corner can you see Wild Basil Clinopodium vulgare. Field forget-me-not, Myosotis arvensis, appears to the right of Bugloss.

The bristles have swollen bulbous bases and they cover the entire above-ground part of the plant except for the flowers themselves which are delicate and tiny (up to 5 mm in diameter). Keble Martin’s Concise British Flora in Colour, now 55 years old but still useful, describes the corolla-tube as having a ‘double bend’. I gently pulled a flower out with tweezers to see what he meant; in his painting he has perhaps exaggerated the bend.

Apex of the plant; note the profusion of bristles with their bulbous bases. Image: Chris Jeffree

The Bugloss fruit consists of four brown nutlets which are slipper-shaped and wrinkled. Some members of the Boraginaceae rely on ants to disperse their seeds, but I have failed to find reference to this mode of seed dispersal in Bugloss. It seems the seeds simply fall to the soil when the plant shakes in the wind. Roberts and Boddrell (1983) working at the National Vegetable Research Station in England carried out experiments on the seed germination of ‘weeds’. They sowed batches of seeds and noted their emergence over a period of five years. Commonly, weed seeds do not germinate all at once. In the case of Bugloss, 10.5 percent of the seeds they sowed were still viable (but dormant) at the end of the five years.

Flower images. Note the curious bend in the corolla-tube on the right-hand photo. Also note the pinkish flush, revealed in this case by the camera but not the human eye. Buds and young flowers often look pink. Image: John Grace

Bugloss is one of many plant species that were weeds of cornfields in earlier times (Brenchley 1920). The specific name arvensis (‘of the field’) is one of the clues. As we continued to cultivate the Ayrshire garden we noticed other species that might be regarded as weeds of cornfields, including Scarlet Pimpernel Anagallis arvensis and Wild Basil Clinopodium vulgare. Nowadays we see these species less often, as farmers employ herbicides to keep them under control. A few of them may have long-lived seeds that remain dormant until opportunity arises.

Terminal region of the plant. Leaves are without petioles and strap-like. An old name for the plant was Sheep’s tongue, referring to the shape and texture of the leaf. Image: John Grace

Bugloss is considered to be a native plant by some authorities and an archaeophyte by others. For example, it is treated as a native in Pearman (2017) but an archaeophyte by Stace and Crawley (2015); Kew’s Plants of the World Online has it as ‘native’ in continental Europe but ‘introduced’ in Britain.  It is one of those difficult cases where we cannot be sure. I turned to John Harvey’s book Mediaeval Gardens to see whether it was present in gardens at the time of the Norman invasion. Yes it was: it was known by the 11^th Century herbalist Macer Floridus. He was the French author of a very early work De Viribus Herbarum (‘On the properties of plants’). It seems possible that the Normans brought the herb with them after 1066. The first British record of the plant in the wild was 1629 and again in 1633 where Thomas Johnson (“father of British field botany”) saw it “upon the drie ditch bankes about Pickadilla”. The ditches of Piccadilly in London are of course long gone.  They were built upon to create some of London’s iconic buildings (including Burlington House wherein many of Linnaeus’s original herbarium sheets are housed).

A mass of flowers at Wallyford, East Lothian. Image: Chris Jeffree.

Where does it grow now? The BSBI 2020 Atlas says this:

“An annual weed of well-drained, usually sandy, soils in arable fields, but also occurring near the sea on sandy heaths, in disturbed dunes and on waste ground. Lowland, but with a casual record at 420 m near Ballater (South Aberdeenshire)….. L. arvensis declined in the latter half of the 20^th century as a result of agricultural intensification, including the increased use of herbicides. Since 2000 the distribution appears to have stabilized, and has increased locally in some areas”.

Inspired by the Ayrshire plants, I looked for Bugloss around Edinburgh. There are plenty of recent records in the BSBI database, including Princes Street Gardens and Duddingston. I found it without too much difficulty growing by a road verge on the edge of a playing field at Old Craighall. Other weeds in the verge had been killed with herbicide, but Bugloss was green and fresh.

Bugloss on the road verge at Old Craighall, Edinburgh. Note surrounding dead plants. Bugloss is apparently resistant to herbicide drenching. Image: John Grace

The British and Irish distribution shows a tendency for Bugloss to occur where arable crops have always been grown (lowlands, with fertile soils that are not too acidic). The global distribution shows the species had a foothold in North America and Australia by the year 1900. Bugloss seed may well have been a contaminant of cereal seeds sent to colonial regions.

Left: British and Irish distribution of Bugloss, from BSBI/Maps. Right: global distribution in 1900 and 2024, from GBIF.

I thought it might be a medicinal plant as some members of the Boraginaceae definitely are (eg Comfrey). But this one apparently isn’t. Perhaps it does have useful medicinal properties; I suspect its bristles discourage herbalists from collecting it.

It can be confused with some of its relatives. Several are similar: Viper’s Bugloss is also bristly but it forms a spire of flowers that are larger and bilaterally symmetrical; Green Alkanet is less bristly and has larger flowers. You may see Italian Bugloss in flower-beds: it has bright blue rather showy flowers that are borne in lax panicles. All of them are visited by bees and other flying insects.

References consulted

Brenchley WE (1920) Weeds of Farmland. Longman, London and now reprinted as a volume of Cornell University Library Collections. (This is an extremely useful handbook, having been written before the widespread use of herbicides).

Harvey J (1981) Mediaeval Gardens. Batsford, London. (A scholarly work with species lists).

Roberts HA and Boddrell JE (1983) Seed survival and periodicity of seedling emergence in ten species of annual weeds. Annals of Applied Biology 102, 523-532.

Stroh PA et al (2020) Lycopsis arvensis L. in BSBI Online Plant Atlas 2020. Princeton University Press.

©John Grace