So did the maidens with their various flowers Deck up their windows, and make neat their bowers; Using such cunning as they did dispose The ruddy piny (peony) with the lighter rose, The monkshood with the bugloss, and entwine The white, the blue, the flesh-like columbine With pinks, sweet williams.
_Britannia’s Pastorals, Book II._--W. BROWNE.
A spiny stem of bugloss flowers, Deep blue upon the outer towers.
Gerarde put Bugloss in one chapter, and Alkanet or Wild Bugloss in another, but nowadays Bugloss or Alkanet are names for the same plant, _Anchusa officinalis_. The drawings of his Bugloss resemble our Alkanet much more closely than they do any other plant called Bugloss, such as _Lycopsis arvensis_, small Bugloss, or _Echium vulgare_, Viper’s Bugloss. The old herbalists, however, were most confusing on the subject. They apply the name Bugloss alternately to _Borago officinalis_ and to different varieties of _Anchusa_, and then speak of _Buglossum_ as if it were a different species! Evelyn describes it as being “in nature much like Borage but something more astringent,” and recommends the flowers of both as a conserve, for they are “greatly restorative.” As Hogg says that _Anchusa officinalis_ had formerly “a great reputation as a cordial,” Evelyn’s description applies to this plant; we may take it that this is the Bugloss he was thinking of. It is a good plant for a “wild garden,” but has a great tendency to spread. I have found it growing wild in Cornwall. Gerarde tells us that the roots of _Anchusa Tinctoria_ were used to colour waters, syrups, and jellies, and then follows a line of scandal--“The gentlewomen of France doe paint their faces with these roots, as it is said.” Rouge is still made from Alkanet.
The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth The freckled Cowslip, Burnet and green Clover.
Burnet has “two little leives like unto the winges of birdes, standing out as the bird setteth her winges out when she intendeth to flye.... Y^{ e} Duchmen call it Hergottes berdlen, that is God’s little berde, because of the colour that it hath in the toppe.” This is Turner’s[15] information. He has a pleasant style, and tells us out-of-the-way facts or customs in a charming manner. Burnet is the first of the three plants that Sir Francis Bacon desired to be set in alleys, “to perfume the air most delightfully, being trodden upon and crushed.” The others were wild thyme and water-mint. It was a Salad-herb, and has (like Borage) a flavour of cucumber, but it has, most undeservedly, gone out of fashion. The taste is “somewhat warm, and the leaves should be cut young, or else they are apt to be tough. Culpepper and Parkinson advise that a few leaves should be added to a cup of claret wine because” it is “a helpe to make the heart merrie.” Canon Ellacombe[16] says it was “and still is valued as a forage plant that will grow and keep fresh all the winter in dry, barren pastures, thus giving food for sheep when other food was scarce. It has occasionally been cultivated, but the result has not been very satisfactory, except on very poor land, though, according to the Woburn experiments, as reported by Sinclair, it contains a larger amount of nutritive matter in the spring than most of the grasses. It has brown flowers from which it is supposed to derive its name (Brunetto).”