Borage - Borago officinalis
Bristly plant about 50 cm in height. Flowers bright blue with a whitish centre, 20 to 25 mm half nodding and rather star shaped, with spreading pointed lobes and a prominent cone of purple black stamens, borne in broad branched cymes.
Gardens, cultivated land, waste ground and waysides.
May to September.
Annual, occasionally overwintering. Most records are probably casuals or garden escapes.
Widespread, particularly in England but often casual and rarely plentiful.
Uncommon in Leicestershire and Rutland. Borage was not recorded the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire.
Leicestershire & Rutland Map
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Yellow squares = NBN records (all known data)
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Species profile
- Common names
- Borage
- Species group:
- Wildflowers
- Kingdom:
- Plantae
- Order:
- Family:
- Boraginaceae
- Records on NatureSpot:
- 55
- First record:
- 30/08/2006 (Calow, Graham)
- Last record:
- 10/09/2025 (Pugh, Dylan)
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% of records within its species group
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Agromyza abiens/myosotidis/lithospermi agg.
The larvae of the Agromyzid flies Agromyza abiens, Agromyza myosotidis and Agromyza lithospermi produce identical mines on the leaves of several food plants in the Boraginaeceae family, such as Borage, Comfrey and Green Alkanet plus a number of other host plants. The initial narrow gallery contains frass in a double line, which it then expands to form a blotch mine. Several larvae may occupy a leaf to form a large blotch. Because the mines on these plants cannot be reliably separated to species level we treat them as an aggregate.


















