Lithospermum
Read about Lithospermum in the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture
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Lithospermum (Greek, stone seed; the seeds like little stones). Boraginaceae. Cromwell. Puccoon. Low-growing hardy mostly herbaceous perennials of minor importance, some of them attractive as alpines and in rock-gardens. Lithospermum has fifty species in extra-tropical regions around the globe, mostly in the northern hemisphere: herbs or subshrubs, rough, silky, or bristly: lvs. alternate, sessile and entire: fls. white, yellow, bluish or violet, in leafy often curved racemes or spikes, sometimes dimorphous as to stamens and style; calyx 5-parted; corolla funnel- or salver-shaped, 5-lobed, the tube cylindrical and straight, the throat naked or crested; stamens 5, fixed to the tube; ovary 4-lobed, with a slender style, stigma usually capitate or 2-lobed: plants mostly with red roots. The genus is closely allied to Moltkia, which see. In cultivation, the best known is L. fruticosum, a rock-garden trailer, which bears numerous leafy spikes of blue flowers, each about ½ inch across, from early summer to autumn. L. purpureo-caeruleum is also an old garden plant. The common gromwell, L. officinale, is rarely cultivated as a medicinal herb. Others are procurable from dealers in native plants. Seeds of the gromwell and the western species are procurable, and plants of the other kinds from dealers in rock-garden plants. L. fruticosum is said to be propagated only by cuttings of the previous year's wood; L. multiflorum by cuttings of young shoots. The kinds with red roots yield a dye. L. arvense is an annual or biennial introduced weed; but most of the species (and those cultivated) are perennial. The best known garden kinds are European, but the American species are deserving of greater attention.
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References
- Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture, by L. H. Bailey, MacMillan Co., 1963
External links
- w:Lithospermum. Some of the material on this page may be from Wikipedia, under the Creative Commons license.
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