Any idea on this wildflower that has come from a wildflower seed mix? The flower as you can see is a lilac colour with a bell or cup-like flower that is upright. The stamens are long and the leaves and stems are very hairy. Ignore the spiky leaf, it's a nearby weed.
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I think that's too prickly for a campanula.
Last time I said 'that's not one of ours' on a wildflower ID I was wrong. But I don't think this is a UK wildflower.
In the sticks near Peterborough
It's bristly though, that's what I was looking at. Looks more echium or borage family to me
In the sticks near Peterborough
me too
In the sticks near Peterborough
Anyone?
In the sticks near Peterborough
Thanks everyone. It's very similar to Rainier's harebell, but like others here I'm not convinced, yet. At the moment it has only the one flower so I'll keep an eye on it and let you know.
Also, unusually, the box has an extensive list of the seeds within, and a lot of them are certainly not wildflowers, nor natives. I'm going to go through the less obvious ones, such as cosmos et al and see if I can ID it that way.
It's an echium - I grew it from seed about 15 years ago - bees loved it - it didn't grow very tall but was smothered in flowers. No idea which echium though
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Some pics here - they look like the ones I grew http://patientgardener.wordpress.com/2010/09/05/echium-vulgare/ although the blogger says they didn't attract insects in their garden - they certainly did in my inner city patch.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I've always been puzzled by those. To me Echium vulgare is Viper's Bugloss, a biennial, about 3 foot tall.
So how has a dwarf annual been created? If it's a hybrid what is the other plant?
Explanations please
In the sticks near Peterborough
Thanks everyone for your input. I've been looking at images and reading up on Echium vulgare and like nutcutlet, I'm confused. The plant I have bears no resemblance to vipers bugloss, not in size, stem, nor leaf. And the flowers are quite different.
And as nutcutlet points out, if it's a dwarf hybrid, what plant is it hybridized with? I can find no reference on the internet to this hybrid, apart from the blog page mentioned by dovefromabove and a company selling seeds for it.
I took some better pictures this morning and one thing is very noteworthy and that is that the flowers are less in number and further apart than vipers bugloss and emerge from the stem with a basal rosette of 3 small lanceolate leaves that are unlike the main leaf of the plant. At the moment the plant is 26cm tall.
The second and third pic's clearly show the lanceolate leaves at the base of the flower.