126 FARM WKEDS OF CANADA 



BLUE WEED (Echium vulgare L.) 



Other English names: Viper's Bugloss, Blue-thistle, Blue 

 Devil. 



Introduced from Europe. Biennial, with a deep, black, tap- 

 root. Whole plant bristly hairy, red at the base of the stiff bristles 

 on the stem. Flowering stems erect and wand-like, forming 

 compound spikes of reddish buds and bright blue flowers, 1 to 

 2 feet high; the spikelets curved at the tips, as is usual 

 in the Borage family. Root-leaves linear-oblong or linear-lance- 

 shaped, narrowed at base, without teeth or divisions, bristly 

 hairy above and below, 6 to 8 inches long, the first year forming 

 dense rosettes of long leaves lying flat on the ground; leaves 

 of the flowering stems stalkless. Flowers tubular-funnel form, 

 not regular, with 5 rounded, spreading lobes; calyx of 5 narrow, 

 bristly divisions. 



The seeds (Plate 74, fig. 60), 4 from each flower, are 1/8 inch 

 long, dark brown, hard and rough, irregularly angular and 

 cone-shaped, sharply angled on the inner face and rounded on 

 the outer, with a keel running from the sharp apex half way 

 down the outer convex face; basal scar a large, flat, triangular 

 surface, acutely margined, marked with two little cone-like pro- 

 jections and a small, deep hole close to the inner angle. 



Time of flowering: July to September; seed ripe by August. 



Propagation : By seeds which are spread by dead plants 

 blown by the wind in winter. 



Occurrence: Common by roadsides and in waste places 

 and fields throughout Ontario and the eastern provinces. Chiefly 

 on limestone and gravelly or poor soil. 



Injury: An abundant, coarse-growing weed, giving trouble 

 in pasture lands that can not be brought under cultivation and 

 in crops on land not worked under a regular rotation with 

 thorough cultivation. In sheep pastures it sometimes causes 



