Pride of Madeira
Echium candicans
Family · Boraginaceae · Irritating
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The most photographed plant in Madeira: a silvery shrub that in spring raises half-metre blue pyramids covered in pink stamens, visible from far off on the slopes.
Scrubland · Dunes and sand · Uplands · Walls and rocks
Also known aspride of Madeira, giant viper's bugloss
How to tell it
A shrub one to two metres, with rosettes of narrow silvery leaves at the branch ends. The inflorescence is unmistakable: a dense pyramid or cone thirty to sixty centimetres, violet-blue, with bright pink stamens protruding well beyond each flower. The whole plant is covered in rough hairs. Range: endemic to Madeira.
What it is confused with
Whitish viper's bugloss
Echium nervosum
Colour decides: intense violet-blue on pride of Madeira, pale blue to whitish on the other. And the latter has leaves with strongly marked veins and a shorter, rounder inflorescence.
Open sheet →What it is for
No food use. It is a first-rate honey plant and gives a much prized Madeiran honey. The rough hairs on stem and leaves irritate the skin of anyone who grabs it carelessly, as in the whole borage family. It is widely planted in gardens and, outside Madeira, behaves as an invader in California and Australia.