Borage Forage

Several years ago, in a fit of herbal zeal (my garden like my books strain toward comprehensiveness) I planted borage. Little did I realize that this beautiful plant with the azur blue flowers would turn into a pest spreading its gray-green leaved plants wherever it chose. I was like the english settlers who imported dandelions from home because they missed them so. Here, they became the pest of lawns and gardens with multitudinous seeds and expanding deep taproots. (No one knows why they were not such awful, escapee pests in England.) The borage plants are hairy of leaf and prickly--annoying.

Nevertheless, I have recently discovered that they are not only good in salads and, in the spring lending their bright flowers to tea sandwiches and cold salads such as chicken and shrimp; but they are also a source of oil that the body uses as prostaglandins with some tested beneficial effects and more reported hopefuls.

So, now I will treat my borage with more respect and use it more plentifully. Who knew?