Plants of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden

The True Forget-me-not is an introduced and naturalized semi-erect perennial forb, growing from 4 inches to slightly over one foot tall on angled hairy stems that are either upright or reclining or resting on another plant, and sometimes branched.

The Leaves are alternate and stalkless, linear to lance-shaped with acute tips and smooth margins. There is one main central vein. There is usually sparse hair on the leaf underside, sometimes short hair on the upper surface. Leaf margins will have hair. Look close to the ground to find the leaves.

The inflorescence is a short branched cluster of stalked flowers (cyme), usually curving, without bracts, at the end of a stem. The central stem of the cyme has appressed hairs. When in bud, the cyme has a coiled shape resembling a scorpions tail.

The flowers are small, up to 3/8 inch wide. The green calyx forms a tube and has five triangular shaped lobes, all parts with appressed hairs, as have the stalk and cluster stem. The light blue corolla has five petals that have a narrowed base with white coloration near the base. There is a yellow nectary ring in the throat of the corolla that forms a 5-sided eye. The petals open out flat at the top of the flower tube. Petals are widest near the tip, which is rounded with a rounded notch in the center, resembling a mouse-ear. The flowers are perfect, with 5 stamens surrounding the pistil and single style, none of which are exserted outside the corolla throat.

Seed: Fertile flowers form a four chambered capsule, each chamber containing a shiny angled black seed.

Habitat: Forget-me-nots are plants of wet places. In Eloise Butler they are found in abundance along Lady's-slipper Lane in the wetland. They grow from a fibrous root system with some creeping rhizomes that vegetatively form colonies. They are not so aggressive as to be considered invasive, but they do supplant some native species. They grow best in full to partial sun in the wet to moist conditions of marshes and bogs. It will tolerate some standing water and is extremely cold tolerant.

Names: The genus name, Myosotis, is derived from two Greek words, mys, meaning 'mouse', and ous, meaning 'ear' - which refers to the shape of the flower petal - and hence one of the common names given above, although some references state that it is a reference to the leaf. The species name, scorpioides, means 'scorpion like', referring to the coiled shape of the inflorescence in the bud stage, which leads to some of the other common names. The author name for the plant classification, 'L.', refers to Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), Swedish botanist and the developer of the binomial nomenclature of modern taxonomy.