Common Name: BORAGE FAMILY
Habit: Annual, perennial herb, or shrub, often bristly or sharp-hairy. Stem: prostrate-decumbent to erect. Leaf: basal and/or cauline, simple, generally alternate, sometimes opposite, especially at base. Inflorescence: cymes, arranged singly or in groups of 2--5, generally coiled in flower, generally elongating in fruit. Flower: bisexual, generally radial; sepals 5, free or fused at least at base; corolla 5-lobed, salverform, funnel-shaped, rotate, or bell-shaped, appendages (often called "fornices") 0 or 5 at top of tube, when present often differentially pigmented, alternate stamens; stamens epipetalous; ovary superior, 4-lobed, style 1, entire or minutely 2-lobed (2-branched). Fruit: nutlets 1--4, when > 1, all similar (often called "homomorphic") or 1 or 2 dissimilar in size and/or shape from the others (often called "heteromorphic"), free (fused), smooth to roughened, prickly or bristly or not.
Genera In Family: +- 90 genera, +- 1600--1700 species: mostly temperate, especially western North America, Mediterranean; some cultivated (Borago, Echium, Myosotis, Symphytum). Toxicity: Many genera may be TOXIC from pyrrolizidine alkaloids or accumulated nitrates. Note: Sometimes still treated in broader sense of TJM2 (e.g., APG IV 2016 Bot J Linn Soc 181:1--20), but recent evidence (Luebert et al. 2016) supports segregation, for our flora, of the families Ehretiaceae, Heliotropiaceae, Hydrophyllaceae, Lennoaceae, and Namaceae.
eFlora Treatment Author: Michael G. Simpson, C. Matt Guilliams, Kristen Hasenstab-Lehman & Ronald B. Kelley
Scientific Editor: Bruce G. Baldwin, C. Matt Guilliams, Kristen Hasenstab-Lehman, David J. Keil, Ronald B. Kelley, Robert W. Patterson, Thomas J. Rosatti & Michael G. Simpson

Common Name: GRAPPLINGHOOK
Stem: ascending to erect, 3--30 cm. Inflorescence: pedicels in fruit 0.5--1 mm, twisted. Flower: calyx > nutlets, upper 2 lobes >> others, partly fused, arched over 1 nutlet, +- bur-like, with 5--10 stout prickles, each barbed distally or +- throughout, lower 3 lobes distinct; corolla +- 1 mm diam, +- funnel-shaped, white. Fruit: nutlets 2, 1--4 mm, dissimilar, +- oblanceolate, margins entire.
Etymology: (Latin: small grappling hook, from appearance of fruit) Note: Most closely related to Pectocarya or to Pectocarya plus Gruvelia based on molecular phylogenetic analyses (Guilliams 2015; Simpson et al. 2017).
eFlora Treatment Author: Ronald B. Kelley, Timothy C. Messick, & C. Matt Guilliams
Unabridged Reference: Veno 1979 Ph.D. Dissertation Univ of California, Los Angeles; Guilliams 2015 Ph.D. Dissertation Univ CA Berkeley; Simpson et al. 2017 Taxon 66:1406--1420