Narbonne flax
Linum narbonense
Family · Linaceae · Harmless
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The wild flax with large blue flowers that lights up limestone banks in May. Each flower lasts a morning and falls, but the plant opens more every day for weeks.
Scrubland · Uplands · Roadsides and waste ground · Fields and pasture
Also known asblue flax, beautiful flax
How to tell it
Bright blue or blue-violet flowers three to four centimetres across, with five overlapping petals and darker veins. Narrow, pointed, bluish alternate leaves along thin stems. Much larger and showier than the yellow flax.
What it is confused with
Upright yellow flax
Linum strictum
Colour settles it: large and blue here, small and yellow on the other. Both harmless.
What it is for
No use, unlike cultivated flax. It is a garden plant in some varieties and, in the field, one of the prettiest blue flowers you find without looking.
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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