Myosotis sylvatica – March 31st 2025 – Wood Forget-me-not
How many species of Forget-me-not do you know? In our survey of towns and cities in Scotland, we have seen seven. But there are ten species of Forget-me-not in Stace’s New Flora of the British Isles and nine of them are natives in Britain.
Wood Forget-me-not Myosotis sylvatica, flowers up to 8 mm across. Note hairiness. Image: Chris Jeffree.
This week we focus on the Wood Forget-me-not Myosotis sylvatica which is the one you are most likely to see in gardens if you live in Scotland. Some authors think it is not a native in Scotland, but has entered Scotland in the horticultural trade and then escaped to become part of the Scottish flora. The horticultural forms and their descendants may have slightly larger flowers and variation in colour (pinkish, yellowish and white sometimes). They take two years to complete their life cycle but in gardens they ‘self-seed’ and provide a shimmering blue carpet every spring.
Wood Forget-me-not Myosotis sylvatica in the crack of a pavement. Here the plant is much smaller than usual. Image: Chris Jeffree.
Myosotis sylvatica is a softly hairy plant, about 30 cm tall and with sky-blue flowers. The flowers are larger than many other Forget-me-not flowers, 8 mm across, and much larger than the most common Field Forget-me-not (only 3 mm). The native habitats of the Wood Forget-me-not include woods, scree and rock ledges, and it has a liking for fertile and damp soils wherever they occur including gardens and roadsides. The distribution map shows it to be very common in England, Wales and east Scotland but rarer in west Scotland and Ireland.
Forget-me-nots belong to the Family Boraginaceae, along with Borage, Comfrey and Viper’s Bugloss. Most members have blue flowers and many of them are hairy or bristly. Some of them can cause a rash on human skin, but Forget-me-nots are relatively soft and harmless.
Hairs on the leaves are shown. Note the pink tinge of the buds, a feature of many members of the Boraginaceae. Image: Chris Jeffree
The name ‘Forget-me-not’ is a guarantee that this plant is easily remembered, even by the most absent-minded would-be botanists. There are several stories about the origin of the name. The first is connected with Henry IV, the King of England from 1399 to 1413. Before he became King one of his emblems was a plant he called soveigne vous de moy – ‘remember me’ – a plant with a reputation that those wearing it would never be forgotten by their lovers. He made a silver-gilt collar of linked S’s meant to represent the flower and incorporated the bloom in his heraldic badge. But plant taxonomy was not yet developed and the plant might have been something else entirely. In fact, the flower known as his emblem, incorporated into the ancient Main Gate of St. John’s College, Cambridge, is the right colour for a Forget-me-not but has four petals not five. You can view the gate here.
This image demonstrates the calyx hairs. Image: Chris Jeffree.
The second story is German. A knight was walking with his lady by the River Danube, and he saw some pretty blue flowers, so he went to pick them as a posy. Alas, burdened by his armour, he lost his footing, fell into the river and was swept away. He tossed the flowers to his girl; it was his last gesture before drowning and he shouted “Forget-me-not!”. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote a poem inspired by the incident:
…Nor can I find, amid my lonely walk
By rivulet, or spring, or wet roadside
That blue and bright eyed flowerlet of the brook,
Hope’s gentle gem, the sweet Forget-me-not.
We suppose the flowers by the Danube and the brook would have been Myosotis scorpioides, the Water Forget-me-not. That is another Forget-me-not we often see, listed in Gerard’s 1597 Herbal as one of several ‘Scorpion Grasses’. According to Pearman (2017) the first proper description of Myosotis sylvatica from the wild in Britain was by Christopher Merrett in 1666 but he called it Myosotis scorpioides latifolia hirsuta. Its present name was given later, by the German botanist, Jakob Friedrich Ehrhart (1742-1795), a pupil of Carl Linnaeus at Upplasa University in Sweden.
Forget-me-nots have been good travellers. Perhaps when Europeans went to live in far-away countries they took plants with them to remember their homeland. Certainly, the global distribution of Myosotis sylvatica seems to mirror that of European humans. The plant reached New Zealand in 1844, North America 1886, Southern Africa 1897, Tasmania 1900, China 1925, SE Australia 1925 (NB These dates are approximate, gleaned from the world map of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility). Unlike many European plants that have emigrated to foreign parts, it does not seem to be considered as a troublesome weed. So far, at least.
Distribution of Wood Forget-me-not, Myosotis sylvatica in Britain and Ireland. From BSBI/maps.
Forget-me-nots have been used as emblems many times. Examples: to remember the fallen soldiers in World Wars (Germany); in the Netherlands and New Zealand as a symbol in organising the fight against dementia; as a symbol commemorating the 100th anniversary of the 1915 genocide in Armenia; and in Germany 1938, the symbol of welfare branch of the Nazi party (Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt, NSV).
In our survey of Scottish towns and cities (the Urban Flora Project) we recorded Forget-me-not 835 times. The table below shows that the most frequent species was the Field Forget-me-not. It’s a tough little plant, unfussy about where it grows; its flowers are small, grey-blue and the whole plant looks somewhat grey. BSBI describe its habitat as “open or disturbed ground, especially cultivated fields but also woodland edges, open grassland, hedges, scrub, roadsides, walls and quarries”, i.e. practically anywhere except wet places.
Species of Myosotis found in the Urban Flora of Scotland (2015-2024), and frequency recorded.
References
Coats AM (1968) Flowers and their histories. Black, London.
Pearman D (2017) The discovery of the native Flora of Britain and Ireland. BSBI, Bristol.
Ruch N and Chevalier M (2018). The forgotten forget-me-not. The Plantsman New Series, 18, 108-111.
Pearman D (2017) The discovery of the native Flora of Britain and Ireland. BSBI, Bristol.
Weryszko-Chmielewska E (2003) Morphology and anatomy of floral nectary and corolla outgrowths of Myosotis sylvatica Hoffm.(Boraginaceae). Acta Biologica Cracoviensia Series Botanica 45, no. 1 (2003): 43-48.
©John Grace
