A couple of annuals or perennials from the Mediterranean area. Hairy leaves and stems, individual flowers blue, often opening from a coiled inflorescence. Generally enjoying sun or a little shade. B. officinalis, borage, long grown in vegetable gardens as a culinary herb and as a food plant for bees. Also as a green manure in farming.
All borage flowers are highly attractive to bumblebees, honeybees and other pollinators, although they are not produced in such abundance as related species, e.g. echiums. The seeds that follow are hard, usually blackish nutlets that are a favoured food of goldfinches and other seed-eating birds. Although the leaves are rather bristly, they are eaten by the larvae of several moths, including tiger moths.