Shrubby gromwell
Glandora prostrata
Family · Boraginaceae · Irritating
The creeping subshrub with intense blue flowers that paints schist and granite scrub in spring, a blue almost no other Portuguese plant has.
Scrubland · Uplands · Pine woods · Roadsides and waste ground
Also known asscrambling gromwell, purple gromwell
How to tell it
A woody creeping plant forming low mats. Narrow, stiff, dark green leaves covered in rough hairs with the edge rolled under. Funnel flowers one to one and a half centimetres, bright blue to violet-blue, with five spreading lobes and five paler stripes. Acid soils only.
What it is confused with
Shrubby gromwell
Lithodora fruticosa
They are cousins and share the folk name. Lithodora fruticosa is upright and belongs to limestone, inland and eastward; this creeps and belongs to acid soil in the west. Both carry the same liver alkaloid problem.
What it is for
A traditional Portuguese infusion under the name erva-das-sete-sangrias, taken as a blood cleanser. Traditional use, in the past, with a brake that matters: the borage family contains pyrrolizidine alkaloids, which accumulate in the liver and cause irreversible damage with repeated use.
With documented traditional uses. Not a therapeutic indication and not a dose.
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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