Borage Borragine

Borage - Borragine. Hardy annual. Borage, also known as a starflower, is an annual herb in the flowering plant family Boraginaceae. It is native to the Mediterranean region, and has naturalized in many other locales  Lovely & tasty blue/green leaves and filled with pretty blue flowers which have been added to salads since Elizabethan times to "make the mind glad," a practice that modern cooks follow.  Clip leaves and use in salads or cook them. Can also be used in tea. Leaves go very well with all egg dishes. Blue flowers are edible. Direct seed in early spring; do not cover seeds since they need light to germinate. Thin to one foot. Harvest by clipping leaves   Uses:  Leaves - Nonna used to add the steamed (drained and chopped) leaves to her pasta dough.  Can be used in an infusion, tincture, juice and diluted leaf juice can be used to make a lotion for irritated skin. The oil extracted from the seeds is available commercially in capsules.  The flowers traditionally were added to wine to "maketh men merrie" and were also used in cough syrups.  NonGMO.   

Spring is the time to collect the wild edible plants nature gifts gardeners before laying seeds for summer gardens. In the steep hills of Liguria, a difficult but rewarding gardening environment, these gifts are numerous: bushy bietole (broccoli rabe) leaves, thin shoots of wild asparagus, and—my personal favourite—boraggine (borage).

Tall stalks or borage, heavy with star-shaped flowers, can be painful to gather due to the thick coat of needle-like spines on mature stems. The delicate blue, purple, or white flowers are lovely enough that the plant is sometimes used ornamentally, and their perfectly symmetrical five-pointed shape has earned the plant the nickname starflower. The flowers, stems, and leaves are all edible.