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: BLUEBELL
Habit: Perennial herb, generally from taprooted, branched caudex; glabrous to spreading-hairy. Stem: +- erect. Leaf: cauline and generally basal, alternate, generally petioled, upper generally sessile. Inflorescence: generally panicle- or raceme-like cymes; bracts 0. Flower: calyx generally deep-lobed; corolla often +- cylindric or bell-shaped, blue, generally pink in bud, tube generally well developed, exceeding calyx, abruptly expanded at throat, with or without ring of inner hairs, appendages present or not; filaments often +- flat, generally attached +- below appendages, anthers included. Fruit: nutlets generally wrinkled, attached near or below middle.
Etymology: (F.C. Mertens, German botanist, plant collector, 1764--1831) Note: Hybrids common; identification sometimes difficult, especially in MP.
eFlora Treatment Author: Ronald B. Kelley & Elaine Joyal
Unabridged Reference: Williams 1937 Ann Missouri Bot Gard 24: 17--159; Milek 1988 Ph.D. Dissertation Univ of Northern Colorado; Strachan 1988 Ph.D. Dissertation Univ of Montana