Family, Borage. Color, blue at first, becoming red. Buds, pink. Corolla, 5-lobed, spreading, with red stamens protruding. Flowers, compactly panicled on the upper side of a curved branch. Leaves, coarse, hairy, linear to lance-shaped, sessile. Stem, 1 to 3 feet high. June to September.

A coarse and bristly plant, not without a certain pretti-ness in the blossoms, but along roadsides covered with dust, plebeian-looking. Dry soil, roadsides and fields. Common.