398 FLOWERS OF GARDEN AND GREENHOUSE 



0. Lucilice and 0. verna may be readily propagated by dividing the old 

 plants in autumn or spring ; and the whole of them may be raised from 

 seed sown in March or April. 

 Description of Entire plant of Omphalodes verna, or Venus' Navel- 



piate 193. -v^ort. Fig. 1 is an enlargement of the flower, and 2 is a 

 section thereof. 



FOKGET-ME-NOTS 



Natural Order Boragine^. Genus Myosotis 



Myosotis (Greek, miis, a mouse, and otis, an ear ; from the shape of the 

 leaves). A genus including about thirty species of hardy annual and 

 perennial herbs, with narrow-oblong leaves covered with bristles. The 

 radical leaves are stalked, but those of the stem are not. The flowers 

 are in scorpioid cymes, that is, cymes curled up after the manner of a 

 scorpion's tail. The calyx is five-cleft or five-toothed ; the corolla salver- 

 shaped or funnel-shaped, five-lobed, the throat of the tube partly closed 

 by five notched scales. Stamens five, attached to the throat of the 

 corolla-tube by short filaments. Style short. Nutlets four, highly 

 polished. The species are distributed throughout the North and South 

 Temperate Regions, especially in Europe and Australia ; six species are 

 indigenous in Britain. 



History. Myosotis palustris, the true Forget-me-not, is a 



common British plant. This and M. sylvatica, another 

 native, whose flowers are almost as large, have doubtless been known in 

 our gardens from the earliest times. M. alpestris, introduced as a garden- 

 plant from Switzerland in 1818, also occurs locally, among moist rocks, 

 at great elevations, in this country, and is generally regarded as a sub- 

 species of M. sylvatica with larger flowers. Of the other species in 

 cultivation, M. asorica, with still larger flowers, was introduced from 

 the Azores in 1848, and M. dissitijlora from Switzerland in 1868. 

 Another popular name for the plants included in the genus is Scorpion 



Myosotis alpestris (alpine). Stems tufted, semi- 

 ;t, hairy, branched at top only, 6 to 12 inches high. 

 Leaves lance-shaped, bristly, with slight indication of stalks. Flowers 

 bright blue with yellow centre, J- to i-inch across, fragrant in the 

 evening ; May to September. A sub-species of M. sylvatica, with stouter 

 stems and shorter cymes ; naturally growing upon moist rocks. Biennial. 

 Plate 194. 



