Blue hound's tongue
Cynoglossum creticum
Family · Boraginaceae · Poisonous
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This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
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The hairy borage with pale blue flowers streaked with dark veins, like small spiderwebs. The fruits are nutlets covered in hooks that grab everything passing by, and that is how it travels.
Roadsides and waste ground · Fields and pasture · Montado · Town and roadside
Also known asCretan hound's tongue
How to tell it
Pale blue flowers with a net of dark purple veins, which no other native borage shows so clearly. The whole plant is covered in soft hairs. Fruits in four flattened nutlets covered in curved hooks, the size of a pea.
What it is confused with
Borage
Borago officinalis
Same family, both blue and hairy, and one is eaten in moderation and the other is not. Borage has star flowers facing down with a black centre; hound's tongue has funnel flowers with dark veins and hooked fruits.
What it is for
None
It contains hepatotoxic pyrrolizidine alkaloids and poisons livestock that eat it in quantity. The hooked fruits are a nuisance on dogs and wool socks, and that is the most likely way to take it home.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
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