A bolt from the blue

Once considered so sacred that Druids consecrated their weapons with its starflower petals before battle, borage deserves greater regard, says Ian Morton

- Ian Morton

THE closest most get to it these days is the intensely blue flower nestling atop a properly constructed glass of Pimm’s. No herb, once so generous in its offerings to mankind, has retreated further from popular awareness. Its many English folk names—bee plant, bee bush, bee bread, ox tongue, talewort, starflower, cool tankard, herb of gladness, borak, lisan selvi, lesan-el-tour, euphrosinum and common bugloss—reflect its perceived attributes. Its five-petal flowers grow together in long, scorpioid cymes and are wreathed in a haze of soft bristles. On the human palate, they have a moreish, honey flavour. The hairy leaves and stems may be likened to bovine tongues in texture and shape—hence bugloss, an inelegant word that comes from the Greek bou, a cow or ox, and the Latin glosso, tongue.

Borage, sometimes written borrage, is thought to derive from the Celtic borrach, or courage, for the plant was sacred to the Druids: weapons were consecrated with it before battle and their warriors prepared for the fray by drinking wine in which borage had been steeped. Its virtue was recognised throughout the Classical world, for the Greeks and Romans used it similarly—Dioscorides and Pliny the Elder both acknowledged it.

A woman hoping to elicit a positive response from a cautious suitor might slip it into wine

Some scholars suppose it to have been the ‘nepenthe’ of Homer’s Odyssey Book IV, a substance that, dropped into wine, ‘eased men’s pains and irritations, making them forget their troubles—a drink of this, once dipped in wine, would guarantee no man would let a tear fall on his cheek, not even if his father and his mother died’.