BORAGE FAMILY BORAGINACEAE 
CORN GROMWELL 
Lithospermum arvense L. 
The Corn Gromwell is among the surprising number of weeds 
that are immigrants from other countries. Its home is Europe 
and Asia but now in many places in this country is more common 
than our native species. It is an annual or 
biennial in fields and waste places, and 
sometimes even on lawns, from Quebec to 
Ontario, south to Georgia and Kansas. — 
The erect and usually branched stem 
grows 6-20 inches high. The leaves are 
bright and green and the lowest sometimes 
have short petioles. 
The tiny white flowers, blooming from 
May to August, are sessile or nearly so in 
the spikes. The green calyx is 5-cleft, the 
narrow lobes about equaling the corolla 
tube in length. The corolla is funnelform, 
s-lobed at the top, with the 5 stamens 
inserted in its minutely hairy throat. The 
style is slender and the 4-divided ovary 
produces in fruit 4 brown and somewhat 
wrinkled or pitted nutlets. 
The Narrow-leaved Puccoon, Lithosper- 
mum angustifolium Michx., is a dry prairie 
inhabitant, and has the longest flowers of 
the genus. They are 2 inches long, one-half 
to three-quarters of an inch across, and 
massed in a flattened inflorescence that 
elongates in fruit. Small scalloped appen- 
dages are attached to the inner side of each 
of the 5 pale yellow petal lobes. Late-season 
flowers have small or inconspicuous corollas 
without these appendages or crests. 
The American or Wild Gromwell, Lithospermum latifolium 
Michx., is a rough-hairy perennial which, although 2-3 feet high and 
occurring locally on wooded slopes throughout the state, may easily 
be overlooked. There are many rough ovate-lanceolate leaves 2-5 
inches long, from the axils of which spring small solitary funnelform 
flowers. The yellowish white corolla barely shows beyond the 5 
linear-lanceolate calyx segments. The flowering time is May. The 
nutlets are white and shining, globose-ovoid and about one-sixth 
of an inch long. 
264 
