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: STICKSEED
Habit: Perennial herb (biennial); hairs appressed to spreading; caudex generally branched in age, often +- woody, taprooted. Stem: ascending or erect. Leaf: lowest petioles generally +- = blades, +- winged, others 0. Inflorescence: coiled cymes, generally > 3, generally terminal and axillary, +- bracted; pedicel in fruit elongated, recurved to reflexed. Flower: calyx deep-5-lobed; corolla rotate-salverform, generally white with yellow patch adaxially, lobes appendaged near base. Fruit: nutlets erect, > style, attachment scar lateral-medial, generally with barb-tipped prickles abaxially and on margin.
Etymology: (J. Hackel, Czech botanist, 1783--1869) Note: Values for corolla limb diam take into account shrinkage during flower period. Difficult, study needed, especially in northern California, southeastern Asia; sometimes merged with Lappula.
Unabridged Note: In North America filling old-world role of flat-flowered forget-me-nots, Myosotis, Lepechiniella, etc, for pollinators.
eFlora Treatment Author: Ronald B. Kelley & Robert L. Carr
Unabridged Reference: Gentry & Carr 1976 Mem New York Bot Gard 26:121--227